UFOs in Wartime: What They Didn't Want You To Know

by Mack Maloney

  Instead of seeing their rescue copter, they saw a large semicircular object appear over the hill next to their position. It was immediately clear this was not an aircraft that belonged to either side. This was a UFO, strange and alien. One member of the team recalled that its color kept changing from light blue to bright red. It was making no noise.

  As soon as the enemy tracers got close to the object, it suddenly stopped in midair, just a few hundred feet from where the U.S. special ops team was hiding.

  The Americans saw a streak of light shoot out from the front of the object — then there was nothing but silence. The enemy barrage had ceased.

  The UFO briefly lingered over the spot where the enemy had been firing at it, then turned and headed out to sea.

  The hit squad waited about thirty minutes. Hearing no more enemy activity, they descended their hill and went to look around the enemy position. What they found was as startling as seeing the UFO itself. There were no enemy bodies, according to one member of the special ops team. Just the enemy’s weapons — and they’d been melted down to almost nothing, leaving a smell that was so bad, it stayed with the team members for hours afterward.

  The team’s copter finally arrived and lifted them out. On returning to their base, one of the members immediately reported the incident to the higher-ups. The other team members never saw him again.

  Those remaining didn’t say anything about the incident during their postmission debriefings. But soon after, they were questioned directly about it, not by military brass, but by civilians.

  Their method of interrogation was extremely unusual. According to one team member, the civilians blindfolded each remaining member of the hit squad, taping their mouths shut as well. They were brought, individually, to an undisclosed location and put in a small room. Inside the room were three men; one wore a hood, keeping his face hidden. This person remained silent the whole time. According to one team member, when the questioning was over, all he recalled was seeing a bright flash of light. The next thing he knew he was back at his base, as were the others in his team.

  Startled, he tried to talk to his colleagues about what had just happened, but none of them had any memory of the interrogation or the encounter with the UFO that preceded it. Only he did.

  Thinking that to mention it again might be dangerous, the team member decided to keep the story to himself.

  Years went by. The team member got married, eventually left the army and moved to Alaska.

  One day, he and his wife were in their boat fishing when suddenly a UFO was hovering right above them. Completely astonished, the team member realized it was the exact same UFO he’d seen years before in Vietnam.

  The UFO remained hovering over the boat for a few moments and then disappeared — this time, for good.

  Batwoman Spotted

  Once again, near Da Nang in the summer of 1969, a soldier was pulling guard duty.

  Suddenly, he saw something coming out of the night, flying toward him. It was not an aircraft or a bird. Rather, it was a naked woman, her skin all black, with huge bat wings. Her body was glowing brightly.

  The soldier had the batwoman in sight for almost four minutes before she finally flew away.

  UFO Over Hanoi

  On September 29, 1972, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news organization reported that a UFO had appeared over the North Vietnamese capital city of Hanoi.

  The AFP’s Hanoi correspondent filed the following lead: “A mysterious object appeared in the clear blue sky over Hanoi Friday, attracting missile fire from the ground but apparently remaining motionless.”

  The reporter saw the object himself through binoculars. His description was as follows: “It was spherical in shape and a luminous orange in color, and was clearly at a very high altitude… North Vietnamese air defenses fired three surface-to-air missiles, [but they] were unable to reach the target… The object remained in the same high spot for over one hour and 20 minutes, although towards the end it appeared less bright than before.”

  Close to the DMZ

  Date unknown. Late one night, almost midnight, two marines on watch near their base perimeter heard a strange sound. In one man’s description, it was like the wind rustling way off in the distance.

  The sound got closer over the next five minutes. Finally, it became so intense, it started rattling the cans tied to the camp’s barbed wire.

  Then the marines saw it right above them. It was a disk, all black, no more than 200 feet off the ground. And it was huge.

  So huge, it took almost a minute for it to pass completely overhead.

  The marines later reported that though they were in a free-fire zone, no one shot at the UFO.

  The Hobart Incident

  One UFO episode stands out in the Vietnam War.

  This one did not involve disillusioned grunts seeing strange things in the sky, or compassionate giants, or anticommunist flying saucers.

  This incident was extensively reported by Jon Wyatt of the Australian UFO Research Network and others. It involves a night of confusion, mistaken identity, a high-speed aerial chase and, in the end, a deadly tragedy. And as with a lot of UFO incidents, it left more questions than answers.

  It started on the night of June 15, 1968. U.S. military observers stationed along the eastern part of the DMZ saw strange lights moving slowly across the sky.

  What could these lights be? The observers theorized the “lights” were North Vietnamese helicopters carrying troops and supplies across the DMZ. Suspecting a new enemy offensive might be building, the U.S. military did three things: They rushed large numbers of antiaircraft weapons up to the DMZ, they put U. S. Air Force fighters at Da Nang air base on high alert and they asked that all available allied warships in the area be assigned to patrol off the DMZ’s coast.

  The Australian Navy destroyer HMAS Hobart was one of those warships.

  It should be noted the North Vietnamese did not use helicopters during the Vietnam War, at least not after 1965. And even if they had, the communists would have been foolish to fly them over the DMZ and into South Vietnam’s airspace, as they would have been quickly shot down by American forces. Yet, the U.S. military could not come up with any other explanation for the objects spotted flying over the DMZ.

  The mysterious lights reappeared the following night, once again detected moving along the eastern edge of the DMZ. Several U. S. Air Force fighter planes were dispatched to the scene, intent on engaging the intruders. U.S. antiaircraft guns also fired at the unknown aircraft. That’s when the lights were seen moving off the coast and out to the sea.

  Disaster soon followed.

  At about 3:30 A.M., the HMAS Hobart was in position off the coast of the DMZ when its crew detected an aircraft approaching. The ship was attempting to contact the aircraft when a missile slammed into its starboard side, killing one sailor and injuring two others. Seconds later, two more missiles hit the Hobart, killing another sailor and injuring several more. The Hobart’s gun crews fired on the attacker but scored no hits.

  An investigation later determined the missiles came from U.S. fighter planes whose pilots thought they were firing at the mysterious lights. The missiles missed their intended targets and hit the Australian destroyer instead. The next morning, American helicopters airlifted the injured sailors off the Hobart, and the heavily damaged destroyer headed to Subic Bay in the Philippines for repairs.

  What was it that appeared over the DMZ that led to the Hobart being attacked? Wyatt points out that Australian history books mention unusual atmospheric conditions over the DMZ the night of the tragedy — but this seems an unlikely cause. Whatever the “lights” were, they were sighted many times after the Hobart incident. The Melbourne Sun said: “[Subsequent] sightings were reported by radar men in Quang Tri Province about five miles below the DMZ. It was the sixth time since [the Hobart was hit] that such sightings have been reported. U.S. command ordered its fighters and artillery to withhold fire not wanting a repeat of the incidents in which t
he Allied ships were fired upon.”

  Adding to the mystery, no evidence of any enemy helicopters was ever found — no wreckage or landing sites. Plus, no large offensive linked to the “helicopters” ever materialized. In August 1968, the Royal Australian Navy News confirmed: “Extensive reconnaissance produced no evidence of enemy helicopter operations in or near the DMZ.”

  The late General George S. Brown was commander of the U.S. Seventh Air Force at the time of the incident; he was in charge of the jet fighters involved in the Hobart attack.

  Years later, Brown became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest position in the U.S. military. As reported by John Wyatt, in 1973, Brown was quoted as saying: “UFOs plagued us in Vietnam. They weren’t called UFOs, they were called ‘enemy helicopters.’ They were only seen at night and only in certain places. They were seen up around the DMZ in the early summer of 1968, and this resulted in quite a battle. And in the course of this, an Australian destroyer took a hit. There was no enemy at all involved, but we always reacted. Always after dark.”

  George Filer, who later became a UFO researcher, served as an air force intelligence officer under General Brown during the Vietnam conflict. He was also reported by Wyatt as saying: “In 1968, I briefed General Brown most mornings on the intelligence situation in Vietnam. A lot of times we’d get UFO reports over the DMZ.”

  The origin of the mysterious lights was never determined.

  PART SEVEN

  Other Sightings

  18

  Three Enduring Mysteries

  Kecksburg

  While the Vietnam War raged with the whole world watching and bizarre UFO incursions were secretly plaguing America’s ICBM bases, other UFO incidents were occurring, including several of a highly unusual nature involving the U.S. military.

  One is known as the Kecksburg incident. It has remained one of the most enduring UFO mysteries to date, perhaps because so many people believe that unlike Roswell, in this case, the U.S. military did indeed retrieve an intact UFO — or something that looked a lot like one.

  It all started on December 5, 1965, a cold late autumn afternoon across the upper portion of the United States. People in Canada, Michigan and Ohio saw something strange flying through their skies. Described as bright and fiery, it caused sonic booms over Detroit and was spotted by pilots over Lake Erie.

  Many eyewitnesses thought it was a meteorite, but others would say later that the object seemed to be under intelligent control, moving as if it was being steered and apparently turning at a sharp angle over eastern Ohio before finally crashing to earth. By most reports, whatever it was came to rest in western Pennsylvania about 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh near a small town named Kecksburg.

  Several Kecksburg citizens saw something fall into a heavily wooded area around 6:30 P.M. These witnesses claimed that instead of coming in at full speed as a meteorite or a piece of space debris would, the object more or less glided in, avoiding some obstacles before finally coming down in the woods. A column of blue smoke was seen rising over the trees shortly afterward.

  The local radio station was called, and they in turn contacted the Pennsylvania State Police. A volunteer fire unit went into the woods along with the local fire marshal and some state troopers. Meanwhile, anxious residents waited nearby wondering what they would find.

  When the fire marshal finally emerged, he ordered the woods sealed off and indicated to witnesses that “the army” would soon be holding a news conference on the matter. But a short time later, the state police made a contradictory announcement: They’d found nothing in the woods. Nothing at all. This left residents more confused than ever.

  But then, a third player came on the scene: the U.S. military.

  According to many witnesses, military personnel — both army and air force — flooded into the small town, sealing off the woods and taking over the fire hall and other buildings. Soon afterward, a flatbed truck was brought in, only to be seen later on leaving town, carrying something covered by a tarpaulin.

  Despite all this intrigue, many people believed the original statement from the state police that nothing unusual had been found in the woods.

  And this was pretty much how the incident stayed — until twenty-five years later, when a national TV show did an episode on the Kecksburg mystery.

  It was revealed on this broadcast that before the police and the military secured the woods, several civilians had made their way to the crash site and got a glimpse at what had come down there. Though their accounts varied a bit, for the most part, they came up with a fairly cohesive description: The object was actually some kind of capsule, shaped somewhere between a saucer and a huge acorn and at least 12 feet in length. It had a gold band around its middle and was copper in color. There were also claims that hieroglyphic-style writing was seen on the object.

  No surprise then that the incident has been called “Pennsylvania’s Roswell.” But even after the show’s revelations, further inquiries to the military went nowhere.

  The story had another troubling aspect. John Murphy was a local radio reporter for the Kecksburg area. He was on the scene of the incident even before the police were, and way before the military arrived. He’d supposedly taken photographs of the object in the woods. He was also there when the fire marshal cleared the woods and when the state police announced nothing had been found. Like many townspeople, Murphy wondered if nothing had been found, then why had the woods been cordoned off? And why had the small army of military people descended on tiny Kecksburg?

  Murphy prepared a special radio documentary on the incident, titled Object in the Woods. But just before he was going to broadcast the report, Murphy was visited by two mysterious men in black, an event corroborated by other radio station employees. Murphy was taken to a back room at the radio station and questioned. When he emerged thirty minutes later, he appeared shaken. Plus, his photographs of the crash site had been confiscated. Later on, when Murphy finally aired his report, it had been so heavily censored, the “object in the woods” of the title wasn’t even mentioned.

  Murphy was said to have become extremely despondent after this. Apparently whatever the men in black told him had disillusioned him to the point that he refused to talk about the incident to anyone.

  Years later, while visiting Ventura, California, Murphy was killed in a hit-and-run accident as he was crossing the street.

  The driver was never caught.

  * * *

  There was an alternate explanation for the Kecksburg incident. The day it happened, December 5, 1965, a Russian space capsule called Cosmos 96 had come crashing to earth. This Russian probe was undeniably acorn shaped and roughly fit the description townspeople had given for the mystery object in the woods. However, at the time, both U.S. and Russian officials insisted the Cosmos probe had fallen to earth earlier that day, a full thirteen hours before the hubbub in Kecksburg. What’s more, they said it had crashed in eastern Canada and not anywhere inside the United States. Still, it seemed like an odd coincidence.

  Then in 2005, NASA came clean, sort of. One space agency official admitted that he had indeed studied fragments of the debris found in the Kecksburg woods and that they had come from a Soviet satellite. But in practically the same breath, the official said that the rest of the information NASA had relating to the incident had been “misplaced.” A further twist occurred in 2007 when the same NASA official revealed that he’d been “inaccurate” when speaking about the incident and the evidence two years before, which seemed to put everything back to square one.

  UFO researcher Stan Gordon probably knows more about the Kecksburg incident than anyone else in the field — and he has no plans on giving up. “I am still continuing my investigation,” he told us in an interview. “New details have come to my attention and in recent years some additional witnesses have been located… I remain hopeful that someday we will find definitive proof of what was recovered in those Pennsylvania woods so long ago.”

  Tod
ay, a large re-creation of an acorn-shaped object covered with indecipherable hieroglyphics sits on a platform across the street from the Kecksburg fire station, a reminder of the small town’s still-unsolved mystery.

  The Coyne Incident

  If there can be such a thing as a leisurely helicopter ride, that was the case on the night of October 18, 1973.

  The helicopter was a UH-1, the ubiquitous Huey. This particular copter belonged to the U.S. Army Reserve base at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, in Cleveland, Ohio.

  Its crew was made up of civilian soldiers. Lieutenant Arrigo Jezzi was one of the pilots. Sergeant John Healey and Sergeant Robert Yanacsek were riding in back. The flight commander was the other pilot, Captain Lawrence Coyne.

  The crew was making the short flight from Port Columbus, Ohio, to Cleveland, about a 100-mile trip. The weather was clear; the night was filled with stars. Perfect conditions for flying.

  A leisurely flight. So relaxed, Coyne was smoking a cigarette.

  But then around 10:30 P.M., Sergeant Healey saw a red light off in the distance — and that’s when the flight became distinctly un-leisurely.

  The copter was flying at 100 miles per hour and about 3,000 feet in altitude when Healey first noticed the red light. All aircraft are equipped with navigation lights, and for fixed-wing aircraft, there is always a red light on the left-side wing.

  So when Healey spotted the red light off to the west, he thought it was just another aircraft and didn’t mention it to the others. A short while later, though, Yanacsek also saw the red light on the horizon and, after watching it for a short while, finally mentioned it to Coyne. The commander calmly suggested he just keep an eye on it.

  But then Yanacsek saw the light turn toward the Huey and start to grow rapidly in size. In seconds, the light was heading for a collision with the helicopter.

  Yanacsek called out in alarm, and Coyne acted instantly. Taking the controls from Jezzi, he put the Huey into a gut-wrenching dive, at the same time somehow calling nearby Mansfield airfield on the radio. Coyne was convinced one of Mansfield’s Air National Guard jet fighters was coming at him. But just as Coyne heard the first words of reply from the Mansfield ATC tower, the Huey’s radio went dead. And still the red light was coming right at them, even as the Huey continued to dive.