by Timothy Good
Said to have been “greatly affected by his experience,” the bodyguard told few people about it.1
Another document reveals how some UFO reports from members of the public were taken seriously by the Ministry of Defence during the Cold War. Minutes from a meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee in May 1959 state that Air Vice-Marshal William MacDonald discussed the matter at the highest level. He reported that UFOs had been observed by official and unofficial sources at a rate of one a week and disclosed that a sample of sixteen reports in early 1957 showed that ten had been identified—but six were not.
Also during the Cold War, and right up to 1991, RAF fighters were scrambled two hundred times a year to intercept unidentified targets penetrating U.K. airspace. Although some were anomalous, most turned out to be Soviet long-range reconnaissance or anti-submarine aircraft.2
Air Disasters
In the late 1940s and 1950s, unexplained crashes of military and civilian aircraft proliferated dramatically. It needs to be stressed that hundreds of reports of UFOs from all over the world were coming in each week from trained observers—pilots in particular. In Need to Know, I cited numerous cases involving mysterious disasters worldwide, including many kindly supplied to me by Jon “Andy” Kissner, former Republican State Representative for Las Cruces, New Mexico,3 and other cases reported by Harold T. Wilkins and Major Donald E. Keyhoe. The late American researcher Kenny Young also collated records of such cases, including the following sobering examples I have selected from the period June 3–8, 1951:
June 3:A C-82 Packet cargo plane “fell apart in the sky” over New Boston, Texas, killing all aboard.
June 4:A C-119 Flying Boxcar cargo plane exploded in mid-air and crashed, killing four crew. A crew member who parachuted successfully reported that the plane “just seemed to come apart around him and he found himself in mid-air.”
June 5:An F-51 Mustang, an F-86 Sabre, and an F-82 Twin Mustang were involved in a mid-air collision, killing two pilots.
June 8:Eleven or more U.S. military planes crashed, some disintegrating in mid-air, including an AJ-1 Savage and an F-80 Shooting Star (the latter “falling apart”), and several F-84 Thunderjets, near Richmond, Indiana, killing three.4
Here follows another of Harold Wilkins’s summaries, covering mainly the period between January and June 1954:
“RAF Meteor jet explodes and strews wreckage over Poulders Green, Kent. Pilot, gallantly remaining at the controls, is killed; Vampire jet cuts out at 15,800 feet and falls on ploughed field at Old Lackenby, Yorkshire. Pilot killed; Royal Danish Air Force grounds all its Thunderjets and Sabre jets after numerous disasters; British Undersecretary for Air says that 507 RAF jets crashed in 1952–1954 with great loss of life (112). Some crashes caused by engine-disintegration; Six-engined Stratojet, U.S. B-47, crashes at Townsend, Georgia, immediately after take-off. Four men lost; Skilled chief test pilot, Ed Griffiths, crashed in field and was killed at Rugby, England, only a few miles from his starting-point. He was testing a new Royal Navy propeller-jet, torpedo-carrying Wyvern, and had only time to radio his position before his sudden crash; Canberra jet bomber explodes in air over suburbs of Doncaster, Yorkshire. Crew of two killed. On the same day, a few miles away, at Six Mile Bottom, Newmarket, a second Canberra crashes, the crew of three missing; The bodies of two pilots were found in a Vampire jet wreckage at Lewes, Sussex.”5
Obviously, not all these disasters should be attributed to alien hostility: many new types of aircraft were in service at this period, thus susceptible to accidents.6 However, it is revealing to consider official U.S. Defense Department statistics for the period from 1952 to the end of October 1956, which I published in the second (and U.S.) edition of Need to Know. Out of 18,662 major accidents of U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy military aircraft—mostly involving fast new jets (such as those scrambled in UFO interceptions)—1,773 were caused by “unknown factors.”7
Test Pilot Attacked
Lieutenant Colonel Roy Jack Edwards enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) in 1941 and served in World War II. A 1947 graduate and classmate of President Jimmy Carter at the U.S. Naval Academy (a letter from Carter to Edwards is reproduced on p. 130), he also served in Korea and Vietnam.
In 1955, while stationed with the USMC at Edwards Air Force Base, California, test-flying the latest version (F-100C) of the Super Sabre jet, Edwards encountered a large UFO during a test flight in clear sky at about six thousand feet. On alerting ground control, the pilot was ordered to break away immediately and return to base, together with his “chase” plane monitoring the flight.
“His observation plane complied,” reported his son Frank in 2008, when the story first came out. “However, my father told me that his raw intrepid instincts kicked in, thus he ignored ground control because he knew he probably wouldn’t ever get another opportunity to confront a UFO—and pursued.”
Edwards headed directly toward the stationary cigar-shaped and orange-glowing object, estimated to be about two football fields in length and slightly more than fifty yards in circumference, without any apparent source of propulsion on its surface area. “As he reached a range of about three or four miles from the UFO, it emitted a single burst of blue light, immediately rendering my father to instantly lose his ability to see and disabled his plane’s communication equipment.”
Although stripped of his vision and communications with ground control, Edwards managed to bank his jet slightly to starboard and to prevent his altitude from dropping. He considered bailing out but, knowing he had enough fuel, opted to “ride out some time,” in the hope that the shock of whatever had happened to him and his plane would be temporary. Luckily, he regained full vision after about fifteen minutes and headed back to base—still minus communications.
During the debriefing by his commanding officer for disobeying orders, Edwards was admonished severely. He learned that the reason he had been ordered to return to base immediately was the fact that the same UFO had previously caused the deaths of three test pilots.
Edwards subsequently lost his status as a test pilot and was reassigned to a U.S. Naval Academy weapons department teaching position at Annapolis, Maryland. Furthermore, he was never again allowed to fly jet aircraft. After a few years at the Pentagon, however, he petitioned and was permitted to fly CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters with the U.S. Marine Corps.
Colonel Edwards did not discuss his experience until two years prior to his death in 2003. Interestingly, his military records list him as having been stationed with the USMC in Gifu, Japan during the period when he was actually at Edwards AFB.8 Tactics such as these commonly apply to pilots who have close encounters with UFOs—as in the following case.
Pilot Witnesses Flying Saucer Crash
Before becoming a military pilot, Robert B. Willingham served with the U.S. Army during World War II and thereafter, until he was reassigned to Korea in 1950 as an F-51 Mustang pilot. Following a serious injury incurred during an attack on his ground position, he was flown back to the United States. In 1952, doctors having decided he was no longer fit to fly combat missions, he entered the Air Force Reserve, flying many types of aircraft, including F-51s, the F-47 Thunderbolt, the F-84 Thunderjet, and the F-86 Sabre.
In the early spring of 1955, stationed as an F-86 pilot at Carswell Air Force Base, Texas, one of Major (later Colonel) Willingham’s missions involved an exercise escorting B-47 bombers as they flew into Texas from New York, heading for El Paso, from where they would then continue to Washington State, and then via the West Coast, Canada, and Alaska on a pre-designated flight path to the Soviet Union (in the event of a nuclear exchange). Each bomber was assigned four fighters.
The fighter escort squadron received an alert that the Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar system had tracked fast-moving unidentified traffic. Willingham then received a report from the radar operator aboard the B-47 he was escorting that the object appeared to be heading towar
d them from a northwesterly direction. “By his radar, he could tell it was coming our way,” Willingham told Noe Torres and Ruben Uriarte, authors of an important book on the case. “I looked up and saw a big, bright object that looked like a star, but I knew it couldn’t be a star.” He estimated that it shot past at over two thousand miles per hour, within thirty-five or forty miles of their position.9
All four pilots escorting the bomber observed the UFO as it headed south toward the Texas/Mexico border. “At about that time,” said Willingham, “it made a 90-degree turn to the right doing about two thousand miles an hour, and I knew it wasn’t an airplane. We didn’t have anything that could do that.” The object then headed in the general direction of Del Rio, Texas. “There were a lot of sparks, and it tilted down by about a 45-degree angle.” The object continued listing as it descended, and then no longer could be seen. Willingham learned that the radar controllers claimed it had crashed “somewhere off between Texas and the Mexico border.”
During a debriefing later, two of Willingham’s F-86 colleagues admitted to their base commander that they had observed the incident, though Willingham was the only one to speak up about it.10
Crash/Retrieval
Based also on the radio exchanges he was listening to, Willingham estimated that the object had crashed near Langtry, Texas. Knowing the area well, he requested permission from the flight commander to fly down to the crash site—about 150 miles away—and attempt to locate the object. Permission was granted. Approaching the crash site at about eight hundred feet, he could see the still-smoldering wreckage of a roughly disc-shaped object on the ground, just south of the Rio Grande river. He then returned to his mission.11 He has implied that he used the excuse of being low on fuel to obtain permission to return to Carswell ahead of his colleagues, as he already had it in mind to procure a small plane and return to the crash site.
Determined to find out more, a few hours later Willingham asked Lieutenant Colonel James P. Morgan—who had flown with him on the mission—if the latter could fly him to Corsicana Air Field, some fifty miles away, where Willingham planned to pick up a light aircraft to survey the crash site. The two men flew out of Carswell Air Force Base in Morgan’s Piper Cub. After arriving in Corsicana, Willingham ran into his friend Jack Perkins, an electrical engineer who had served in Willingham’s Civil Air Patrol unit. After relaying the events of the day, Willingham asked if Perkins would accompany him to act as witness.
The two took off from Corsicana at around 14:00 in a very basic two-seat Aeronca Champion. “It was a nice little plane for landing and taking off in tight spaces,” Willingham reflected. “You could land it in a hundred feet if you had to, but I had to make sure I had enough room for take-off, especially if you had a passenger.” Two hours later, they arrived in the vicinity of the Langtry crash site. There they noted that a team of Mexican soldiers had cordoned off the area and were guarding the craft and wreckage. Based on Willingham’s testimony, Torres and Uriarte describe the scene as follows:
“The UFO had impacted very close to the edge of a flat rocky ledge overlooking the Rio Grande river. [It seemed as though] it had first bounced and then skidded about three hundred yards generally toward the south, plowing up a mound of dirt ahead of it as it went along. The main object split into three large sections, and smaller debris was scattered all along the skid line. The top of the object, which was dome-shaped, broke off and landed about fifty feet beyond the main body of the UFO. The main section, which originally was a flattened disc between twenty-one and twenty-five feet in diameter, broke into two larger pieces and many smaller ones.
“The bottom part of the UFO, ripped into two large sections, was partially embedded against a sand mound, while the dome lay about fifty feet beyond it. Willingham and his partner noted a long plume of shiny metal debris that extended along the long furrow, where the object hit and skidded on the sandy desert soil prior to coming to rest. Judging from the length of the furrow, Willingham guessed the object was traveling ‘pretty fast’ before hitting the ground.”
After landing, Willingham eased the Aeronca onto the rocky ledge between the crashed disc and the edge of a small cliff leading down to the Rio Grande.12
The Mexican military were “just looking at everything,” Willingham recalled. “Of course, it was still red-hot, and they were staying back from it.” At this time, a Langtry resident paddled across the shallow river to talk to Willingham and Perkins, relating his sighting of the flaming object, which had nearly clipped the top of his house. At first, the armed soldiers had assumed that Willingham and Perkins were part of an American recovery team they had been expecting. However, as the pilots followed the skid marks to the craft itself, they were ordered at gunpoint to leave the area, though they kept studying Willingham’s Air Force uniform, as if still wondering if he was part of an official investigation.
Buying time, Willingham, who spoke Spanish, chatted with one of the officers, a Lieutenant Martínez of Mexico City, who offered to take Willingham closer to the main impact site. Perkins was not included in the invitation. As the pilot approached to within thirty-five or forty feet of the burning-hot object, two soldiers carrying rifles tipped with bayonets prevented him from getting any closer. Glancing in the direction of the separated dome section, he noted that it was more heavily guarded than the rest of the debris and was warned to keep away. Willingham also observed a number of Mexican government officials at the crash site.13
“It was at this point,” Ruben and Noe told me, “that he [Willingham] saw the ET bodies, which is a fact he withheld from us during the writing of our book but later revealed on the Jeff Rense radio program on March 8, 2010. He disclosed for the first time his recollection of three strange, non-human entities that he saw inside the ruptured hull of the crashed UFO. Willingham said two of the bodies were badly mangled but one was fairly intact. The entities wore no clothing of any kind. He was fascinated by the arms of the creatures, which he described as being ‘like broomsticks.’”14
As the light was fading, Willingham joined Perkins and headed toward their plane. Determined not to take off without having retrieved some evidence (he had not thought to bring a camera with him), he picked up one of the many fragments of shiny metal, still warm, wrapped it in his handkerchief, and put it in his pocket. They took off at about 16:30. After a refuelling stop near Waco, they headed back to Corsicana.
The following day, Willingham filed a detailed report at Carswell Air Force Base about the incident, which was forwarded to Colonel Miller, commander of the Air Force Reserve unit. At some point later, Miller summoned Willingham to his office. Also present were two of the other pilots he had been flying with during the initial sighting. After Willingham had related details of his experience in Langtry, there was little response. But he was later to receive several disturbing telephone calls from various personnel, including a general and a major in Air Force Intelligence, warning of “consequences” if he related to others what he had seen.15
The Metal Artifact
The curved metal artifact was about the size of a man’s hand and half an inch thick, of a grayish-silver coloration and extremely light, with more than twenty precisely crafted holes in a honeycombed pattern on one side. (A sketch of the artifact made by Willingham in 1978 for a Japanese television program is reproduced in the Torres/Uriarte book.) Ridges on the other side or sides looked to Willingham “as if this piece had been broken off from a larger object…. The outside was kind of a dark gray and the inside of it was kind of orange-colored.”
A keen metallurgist, Willingham ran a series of tests, including several with a cutting torch. At temperatures from 3,200 to 3,800 degrees Fahrenheit, the metal became hot but would not melt. “The cutting torch made the metal turn slightly blue for a while, but it did no lasting damage,” he reported. “We tried grinders and everything else, but nothing would even touch it.”
Most unfortunately—as it transpired—Wi
llingham did not take any photographs of the metal. He flew the fragment from Texas to a Marine Corps metallurgy laboratory in Hagerstown, Maryland, where a major applied the same tests, with identical results. Further tests were needed, he said, after which he would get back to Willingham. The following day, the major phoned and apologized, explaining that he had to move out of the building. When Willingham called back later and asked to speak to him, he was informed that no such person worked there, and no records existed of either the metal or the tests carried out. A further visit to Hagerstown revealed only that it would not be in his best interests to pursue the matter.16 Further warnings ensued. Two Air Force Intelligence personnel—a General White17 and a Major Sealton—warned Willingham to tell no one, even if commanded to do so by a superior.
Within two weeks of the experience at Langtry, Willingham flew over the same area to see what had happened. Not a fragment of the device could be seen. As in other crash/retrieval cases, the entire site had been wiped clean by (I presume) a technical intelligence team,18 also known as a “T-Force,” usually assigned the responsibility of collecting flying discs at that time.19
In 1967, Colonel Willingham made the mistake of mentioning his experience to a reporter for a weekly newspaper in Pennsylvania. On retiring from the Air Force with many decorations in 1971/72, he was informed that he would not be receiving a pension. “Of course, they didn’t tell me that it was because of what I said,” he told Torres and Uriarte, “but I figured it out. Twenty-six years of service went down the drain….”20
Project Blue Book
From about 1959 to 1963, Colonel Willingham was assigned to Project Blue Book, the third of the U.S. Air Force’s official investigations into unidentified flying objects (1952–69). “Of the two thousand cases that my Blue Book team looked at, I would say that at least half of them were totally unexplained,” he acknowledged—at variance, not surprisingly, with Blue Book’s official figures. The cases Willingham investigated were mostly on the East Coast, but occasionally he was ordered further afield, such as to Chile and Venezuela:
