UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

There are perhaps more UFO crash reports than some people might realize. Far from being merely the realm of the famous Roswell, New Mexico crash there have been a plethora of such incidents reported throughout history, and these are not always recorded out in the middle of nowhere, either. One rather obscure supposed UFO crash, considering its location, is the time one apparently exploded and crashed right on the fringes of the neon studded gambling capital of the world, Las Vegas.

The whole odd affair actually began all the way across the country over in Oneida, New York, where on April 18, 1962 military radar stations began picking up an anomalous object that seemed to be moving west rapidly. As it did so, there began a series of reports marking its progress, as panicked witnesses from across the country saw what looked like a glowing red ball or “flaming sword” that was at times bright enough to make night seem like day. These reports came on from several states along its trajectory, including Colorado, Kansas, Arizona, and most remarkably of all in Eureka, Utah, where there would be a report that it had actually landed and caused massive electrical disruptions before taking to the sky again. Throughout all of this the object was reportedly as largely completely silent, and there was such a deluge of calls to authorities that fighter jets were even scrambled and put on alert at Luke Air Force Base, in Arizona. The object headed towards Nevada, where it continued to be seen by hundreds of people as it approached Reno, then was witnessed to make a turn to head in the direction of Las Vegas, and this is where things would get even stranger. There was reportedly heard an enormous rumbling and then a thunderous boom and blinding flash of light, after which the object vanished both visually and off of radar somewhere over Nellis Air Force Base, right out in the badlands just past the lights of Las Vegas.

Las Vegas

The sheriff’s office for Clark County, Nevada, was apparently so flooded by calls from terrified residents who had heard the boom that it was thought that there had been an explosion and that perhaps an aircraft had gone down. A sheriff’s search party was sent out to the area that the object was last seen, yet there could be found no sign of a downed aircraft and there were furthermore no reports of a missing aircraft from any airports in the region. Considering this, it was assumed that what had been seen was a meteor that had exploded in midair, and the military was quick to use this explanation as well. There was only a single newspaper article related to the odd incident at the time, which appeared the next day in The Las Vegas Sun with the headline “Brilliant Red Explosion Flares In Las Vegas Sky,” and for the most part everyone just sort of forgot about it. Despite the fact that thousands of people across the country had seen the mysterious object and several hundreds had heard the massive explosion, it seemed the meteor explanation was good enough. Case closed. Or so it seemed.

It would not be until decades later that anyone would blow the dust off the case, when UFO researcher Kevin Randle began snooping around for more information in military reports and declassified reports from the Air Force’s Project Blue Book UFO investigation, and he also went about interviewing numerous witnesses to the events in order to shed more light on what happened on that evening, which would all be covered in his book A History of UFO Crashes. What Randle would manage to uncover would begin to paint a picture of something perhaps quite a bit stranger than a meteor, and which the military quite possibly knows more about than it is letting on.

Even a casual look into the old reports began pointing out oddities. One declassified military report that was completely free to read by anyone who cared came from a Captain Herman Gordon Shields, who on the evening of the incident had been flying a C-119 aircraft near La Van, Utah. He would report that both he and his co-pilot had witnessed a very bright light, that continued to get brighter even as they maneuvered their plane to get away from it. Whatever it was, it was apparently “as bright as daylight,” completely illuminating the landscape, and as they tried to further evade and avoid what they felt might be an incoming collision they were able to get a clear look at the source of the light. According to pilot Shields, it was a long, cigar shaped object with a yellow top surface and the bottom of which was an extremely bright light. Shields would say in his report of the object:

And this object which I saw was illuminated. It had a long slender appearance comparable to a cigarette in size, that is, the diameter with respect to the length of the object. The fore part, or the lower part of the object was very bright, intense white such as a magnesium fire. The second half, the aft section, was a clearly distinguishable yellowish color. I would say the object was just about divided in half, the fore part being intensely white, the aft section having a more yellow color to it. There was no exhaust, no trail following after it. It was clearly defined. I saw it for a period of maybe one to two seconds.

Both the pilot and co-pilot were certain that this was no meteor. Another very curious report uncovered by Randle was that of witnesses Bob Robinson and Floyd Evans, who saw it fly low as they were driving along a highway near Eureka, Utah. The witnesses said it was clearly some sort of flaming cylinder with a “series of windows” along its side, and that its approach caused their vehicle to stall. They also claimed that it slowed to a stop to hover momentarily over them before continuing on its way, after which their engine promptly started up again. Other witness reports seemed to point towards something under intelligent control as well, including reports of the object making turns, speeding up or slowing down, reversing its course, and even landing, all things that you might realize meteors do not do. Another interesting eyewitness report uncovered by Randle comes from the declassified Blue Book files from a witness whose name had been redacted, and which reads:

As the object passed over Robinson [Utah), it slowed down in [the] air, and after, [a] gasping sound was heard, the object spurted ahead again. After this procedure was repeated three or four times, the object arched over and began descending to earth after which the object turned bluish color and then burned out or went dark. After the object began to slow down it began to wobble or “flshtail” in its path.

Military reports also showed some other intriguing details surrounding the case. It would turn out that not only had there been significant military activity in the area of Nellis Air Force Base after the explosion, including the scrambling of jets, but an investigator Douglas Crouch, from Hill Air Force base, would interview many witnesses and officially state that he did not believe the object seen to be a meteor. Crouch would also confirm that there had been no military tests in the area at the time, nor any unusual atmospheric phenomena on the night in question, and additionally no aircraft in the area that could have caused the disturbances. Far from the official government stance that this was a meteor, Crouch would clearly state that “no explanation has been developed for the brilliant illumination of the area, the object itself, or the explosion.”

Another detail that seems to not fully line up is that Air Force investigation reports state that an orange, glowing object in Eureka, Utah, was so low and bright that it actually knocked out photoelectric cells in the area. There was plenty of other evidence offered up by Randle that did not fit into the meteor theory either, such as that the directions of the various reports across states often described it going in a different direction, the speed was too slow to be that of a meteor, and on many occasions it was far too low to be a meteor, often wildly changing altitude in mid-course. Also, the official reports show that fighter jets had indeed been scrambled in response to the event, so would they do that for a simple meteor? Regardless, a follow-up investigation made by a J. Allen Hynek and Lieutenant Colonel Robert Friend would come to the conclusion that the object had been a rare type of bright meteor called a “bolide,” and Friend would say of this:

This investigation was completed in one full day and it was concluded that the object was a bolide. An attempt was made to locate the object but this effort failed due to the general nature of the data. Further study of this sighting indicates that the meteor probably struck in the area of the Wasatch National Forest; however, the Air Force has made no further at tempts to recover it.

One day to come up with that, and that seemed to be the end of it as far as the Air Force was concerned, but there were also some ominous hints of a cover-up found speckled throughout these files that did not add up. Randle noticed that Nellis air Force Base first labeled the object as “Unidentified,” but it was later changed to “Insufficient Data for a Scientific Analysis” without further explanation. Perhaps even weirder is the assertion in the report that “no visual” was made of the object captured on radar, despite the fact that there were literally thousands of reports made to police of people seeing this thing. It was also found that the Air Force reports were intentionally and deceptively dated to make it seem as if the Utah accounts and Nevada accounts had happened on different days, possibly to make them seem like two separate events and throw off anyone snooping around. Randle says of this:

The reports, as filed in Project Blue Book, were deceptively dated. The Utah case had the time logged in “Zulu,” or Greenwich Mean Time, which means it was advanced at that time of the year by six hours. Add six hours to the 8:15 time, and you advance it to early morning the next day. A quick glance at the file shows the Utah case dated April 19, and the Las Vegas case logged in local time as April 18. On paper it looks as if they take place on separate days when, in reality, they happened within minutes of each other on the same day.

There were also inconsistencies throughout, such as the files at differing points claiming that the object was a weather balloon or a U-2 spy plane, before coming back to meteors again, almost as if they couldn’t decide which explanation to go with. It must also be remembered that at the time U-2s and balloons were tracked very carefully and there were none scheduled to be in the area at the time of the events. Much of this suggested to Randle that the military was being misleading at best, and downright lying at worst in an effort to muddy the waters and promote a mundane, palatable explanation. Randle believes that this was no meteor or balloon or conventional aircraft, and that somewhere out there in the desert outside of Las Vegas an alien craft of some sort crashed and is being covered up. He says of this in his book:

It is a case that demonstrates the air force’s policy of explaining UFO sightings, even if they have to change dates to make the explanations work. It shows that the air force would lie to the public about the UFO situation. And it shows that air force investigators, when handed a solution, wouldn’t ask the basic questions. They accepted the solution quickly. This also reveals that the air force was not interested in investigation or solving riddles. They were interested in clearing cases, slapping a label on them and letting it go at that. They ignored the information that didn’t fit with the bolide theory. Something extremely extraordinary happened on the night of April 18, 1962. The air force offered a series of explanations ignoring the facts. But the witnesses who were there know the truth. They saw something from outer space, and it was not a meteor. It was a craft from another world.

We are ultimately left to wonder just what happened out there on that night back in 1962. Was this just a meteor or was something more mysterious going on? If so what could it have been? Did a UFO actually crash right outside of Las Vegas, perhaps, as some conspiracies say, because it was actually engaged and shot down by the fighter jets that had been scrambled? Did the government willingly cover it all up? In the end there is no evidence at all to fall back on either way, and that time a UFO supposedly exploded out into the Las Vegas desert will likely remain for some time to come.

Here is what we are looking for on the ongoing UFO/UAP story with the Navy and the USAF's position and comment on the issue:

Have Air Force pilots encountered any similar unexplained phenomenon on radar, electro-optically, or visually? If so, what is the general frequency and magnitude of these events?

Navy Super Hornet pilots out of NAS Oceana had constant encounters with these objects in 2014-2015, especially on radar. It got so bad that by early 2015 Oceana filed NOTAMs warning aviators about the phenomenon in the warning areas off Virginia. We have talked to the crews directly about this and are in the process of obtaining those NOTAMs and the paper trail leading to their posting. Langley's F-22s, which have superior sensor capabilities in some respects to the Super Hornets, as well the base's T-38 aggressors, are based right next-door and use the exact same warning areas for training daily. Did Langley aircrews experience the same phenomenon? If so, to what extent? What about other USAF assets that use the same airspace for training?

The Navy changed its reporting practices and procedures for encounters with unexplained flying objects significantly due to the massive increase in incidents in recent years. Has the Air Force done the same? If not, why? Does it even have set procedures for these events? If so, what are they?

Has the USAF experienced the same massive increase in incursions of UAPs over its bases and installations that the USN has?

Does the Air Force have similar electro-optical and infrared video of UAPs similar to what the Navy has, or other data for that matter?

Does the Air Force see this phenomenon as a national security threat? What is it doing to mitigate or better understand it?

Thanks so much for your help on this. I think it's critical to clear these details up, especially now that the Navy has admitted that the videos depicting these unexplained craft are indeed real and show objects it cannot identify.

I quickly followed up with another question:

The Navy is saying these things are constantly (as in many times a month or more) busting into controlled or even secured airspace. In 2015, they were out there for days off Virginia in the warning areas, even causing the base to post the NOTAMs due to near misses etc. The USAF is tasked with protecting this airspace. Has the USAF launched alerts and investigated these when the Navy (or maybe even the USAF) was calling them out? What was done in regards to homeland defense when these were in the warning areas so persistently? How did the USAF and its NORAD arm take this issue up during the 2014-2015 incidents and what does the Navy says has occurred constantly all over up through this very day?

Once again, I have to stress that the Air Force has the homeland air sovereignty mission. Fighter aircraft sit on alert across the United States ready to scramble within a matter of minutes to intercept and investigate any unknown craft flying in or near the nation's airspace. This includes what some may traditionally call UFOs. The War Zone has incredibly in-depth evidence of how such an action is taken with regards to the presence of transient unidentified flying objects, let alone ones that are persistently operating in restricted airspace, as was supposedly the case off the east coast of the United States in 2014 and 2015.

Air Force units that fulfill the homeland air defense mission are spread across the country, but those equipped with the highest level of fighter aircraft capability are scattered around the continental United States' maritime perimeter and are also based in Alaska and Hawaii. F-15C/Ds equipped with the most powerful fighter-optimized active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars in the world and carrying Sniper targeting pods for long-range visual target identification primarily fulfill the maritime border defense role in the lower 48 states, with F-22s in Hawaii and Alaska doing the same.

F-16C/Ds, which are also now equipped with AESA radars, based at Andrews Air Force Base just outside of Washington D.C., keep watch over the Capital Region. Other F-16s from a handful of Air Force units that patrol the central U.S. can also help augment the country's perimeter aerial security, but the alert mission is one that must be specifically trained for, with unique protocols and infrastructure requirements. It is resource-intensive and not cheap to execute, either. In other words, it is not something just any fighter squadron, especially a Navy one that has a very different mission focus, can just execute on the fly under normal circumstances.

As such, my questions attempted to fill in a missing part of the Navy's recent UFO-related accounts. If these flying craft were indeed being detected, how is it possible that the Air Force didn't scramble to investigate them, and do so multiple times over the course of these events? If incursions over installations are ongoing, regardless of if they are drones or something far more fantastical, how isn't the Air Force directly involved with investigating and mitigating these potential threats inside the airspace they are responsible for defending?

This is not just a UFO issue, it comes down to America's ability, or willingness, to defend its airspace from non-traditional threats. The threat to the homeland posed by cruise missiles is already palpable, but we are now in an era where lower-end and swarming drone warfare is becoming one of the most preeminent security issues of our time. It's a threat that has recently manifested itself in spectacular ways that some of us have warned would occur for years. So, my questions are just as relevant to the core of our national security as they are to simply finding out new details about mysterious flying objects that seem to have risen to new heights in the public's consciousness in recent years.

After a promising start with the Air Force itself, I was told that the inquiries had been forwarded to the Office of the Secretary of Defense's (OSD) public affairs arm. One public affairs officer, Susan Gough, would be handling the request. At first, this sounded very promising. The inquiry had been elevated to someone in a position that might be able to really add some unique context to the issue.

Sadly, this ended up being anything but the case.

Simply put, my experience with Susan Gough has been the worst I have had with any of the Defense Department's public affairs personnel, ever. What has transpired, or more accurately what hasn't transpired, over the last six months leaves me with no confidence or trust in this official representing the DoD on the issue. This is not personal in any way. She may be a wonderful person, but her behavior has been a clear example of everything the Pentagon's media operations should not be and it certainly is not due to a lack of training or experience. Her resume is impressive and may even be concerning to some who are seeking some morsel of truth regarding this bizarre and historically tortured issue.

My experience is not unique in any way. Others who are working this story have had similar experiences almost to a laughable degree. The reason why so many journalists are interacting with her at all on this issue is that she now holds the entire media/public affairs portfolio on UFOs within the DoD. Sometime shortly before I submitted my questions, the decision was made to funnel every request regarding this issue to her and her alone. The services no longer had control of their own messaging on the matter. Why this decision was made has not been made clear.

I wrote and called Susan Gough for months after my initial inquiries were forwarded to her. No correspondence was answered and no comments were given—not a timeline for delivery or a simple "we cannot comment at this time" response to any of my inquiries.

Nothing.

In the meantime, prolific Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) filer and author John Greenwald over at the Blackvault.com had received a FOIA request that not only had my questions in it, but it also had the internal correspondence within the Air Force concerning answering at least a portion of my inquiries. John was nice enough to let me know he had received the documents and that he would work with me as to their release.

Once again, the whole idea was to get something, anything on record in regards to the Air Force, America's air sovereignty, and this issue. The last thing I wanted to do was publish a story about how the Defense Department won't even acknowledge these questions. I have had absolutely the best experiences with DoD public affairs over many years. We work with them daily in what we do. The vast majority of those interactions are hugely productive. In fact, I have never had a negative relationship with a U.S. military public affairs officer, even on topics that were far from positive for the Department of Defense. Overall, they do excellent work and understand our requests and process them with total professionalism in a timely manner. I cannot overstate how important their job is and how well they usually do it.

With this in mind, I dreaded having to take issue with the Department of Defense on their communications operations. But after nearly three months of getting no replies of any kind, I had to do something.

It wasn't until I sent a very frank letter on December 5th, 2019 that I received this answer from Ms. Gough. This was the first actual correspondence I had with her since my inquiry was made in September:

Hello Tyler,

My sincere apologies. It appears that your emails were being dumped into a junk/spam folder instead of my inbox, so I wasn’t seeing anything from you for a long time. Only just noticed because you are not the only one with a similar complaint. It was not intentional, I assure you, and I’m not quite sure how/why it happened; I get quite a few continuing queries about UAPs from multiple reporters, all with similar questions, so I know it’s not the subject.

I’m sorry, I don’t recall getting a voicemail from you, but I was out of the office for health reasons several times in the last several months, and may have missed it.

Anyway, I will look at your questions this morning, and will get back to you as soon as I can with answers.

Regards,

Sue

I replied very positively, I was so glad we had a breakthrough and I wouldn't have to write about how unresponsive the Department Of Defense's representative on this matter was. Even if they weren't willing to say much, we would actually have that on the record and I made Ms. Gough aware of the internal documents that had some answers to my questions that John Greenwald obtained. So, at least I could get some commentary on those, if nothing else. Above all else, a relationship could begin with the sole point of contact on this topic within the DoD. It's a long game. I was happy to finally be working with Ms. Gough so that future clarifications could be had.

I followed up quickly after her response asking if we could have this wrapped by the end of next week. Her reply stated as such:

"Yes, we should be able to. Thank you very, very much for your patience and understanding!"

Finally, I could slap a deadline on this and give John the heads up that there was progress.

The reality ended up being the complete opposite. Ms. Gough never got back to me. What followed over the next four weeks was me reaching out looking for an update and getting nothing back. This was different though as her original excuses were clearly false because she just went back to doing the same thing even after her apology and acknowledgment of a timeline.

By January 2nd, 2020, yet another month had gone by and it was clear that she had gone dark once again.

This was my email to her:

It's the New Year and still nothing. I haven't heard anything since we last touched base nearly a month ago when you said we could wrap it up the following week. Checked in multiple times. Nothing.

I am holding off another outlet on this with their FOIAs that include the DoD's correspondences with my name all over them, at this point, it is just embarrassing for me. I also find it odd that other outlets seem to have gotten responses and clarification follow-ups. In fact, some of them are people, not outlets.

I really want a good relationship here, as I have with every single one of my DoD PA contacts, rain or shine. I hate writing emails like this, but this is ridiculous and insulting. It has been what? FOUR months?

So what's the next step? Do I have to file a formal complaint over this? Something is really broken here, especially when you have your own aviators claiming that craft are violating our airspace regularly and I can't even get responses to specific questions, some of which were answered months ago in internal correspondences that the department released via FOIA long before I ever got them. In fact, I still don't have them.

Very disappointing and frankly, stunning.

Tyler Rogoway

No response.

On January 7th, I sent another note, stating that I have done everything I can, given her every opportunity to respond, and that months had rolled by since my initial request and it was now weeks past our deadline. Finally, I got another response:

Sorry Tyler, I’ve been out a lot, and just back today. Let me ping the people who owe me the info and see if they have it now.

Clearly, she had something to share, as I had the Air Force's internal emails in my hands for months via John Greenwald's FOIA request.

After that last glimmer of hope, the gaslighting operation was made clear. Once again, Susan Gough disappeared.

By this time I was so exhausted with the issue and a ton of other long-lead projects had come due, so I set it aside. Really, I didn't want to have to explain how terrible of an experience this was and how this DoD official evaded me for months. I thought, 'maybe if I just gave it a little more time she would pop up again.'

That never happened.

At the time of writing this, it has been six months since my original request. I can't thank John enough for being so patient with me on this story. He understood my important working relationship with the DoD and how I wanted to give Ms. Gough every possible opportunity for a professional and positive outcome.

I have no idea what the situation is behind the scenes with this topic at the DoD or what Gough's directives or issues are in regard to it. Yet the fact that after the Pentagon's own personnel have stated that constant intrusions into sensitive airspace have occurred by unidentified craft, they are not willing to even respond to questions about Air Force's role in those events, the service that is responsible for defending that airspace, is damning. The DoD seems to have helped seed interest in this issue, but is now unwilling to offer any explanations or clarifications regarding it. That seems very peculiar if not downright suspicious. For a topic that has been so abused over the decades, this really is an abhorrent stance for the DoD to take and it negates any trust it may have developed on the topic in recent years.

The most troubling part about this whole mess is that at least some of my inquiries actually got answers, ones the DoD shared with a FOIA requester, but not the actual reporter asking the questions. Once again, Gough had at least something to offer, but didn't convey it after months of prodding.

Greenwald's FOIAs show that the Air Force's public affairs officials actually did excellent work looking into at least some of my questions. They did not shy away from the topic and took it seriously, but with one unresponsive person having the authority to actually convey any of that information, it meant that in this case the results of their work were never released.

Here's what the Air Force found out in regards to Langely Air Force Base's F-22 and T-38 aircrews seeing similar objects in the restricted warning areas off the eastern seaboard. You can see the whole exchange below:

It would seem by these emails that the F-22 and T-38 pilots from Langley were not having the same encounters as the Hornet pilots from nearby NAS Oceana. If this is indeed the case, it really puts the Navy encounters in a different light and it does match anecdotally with what we have gleaned through our own background investigation. So, if the Air Force tactical jet pilots were oblivious to the craft flying off the east coast, why?

Certainly, technology isn't an issue. Like the Super Hornet, the F-22 is also equipped with an AESA radar and, in some ways, it has far more capable sensors than the Super Hornet and possesses significantly higher performance. The Navy pilots' UFO encounter stories have also matured a bit as time has gone by and explanations do exist that could explain their encounters off the East Coast that are far from out of this world, but this discrepancy really sets up a new set of circumstances that are even more puzzling than before.

In addition, another short email string appears to shows that the Air Force has not followed the Navy's move to change its policy surrounding how its personnel report encounters with unidentified aircraft and that the incidents that have occurred actually had to do with drones, not something more exotic.

You can check out these documents for yourself over at The Black Vault.

Once again, the disconnect between the Navy and the Air Force's stance on this issue is puzzlingly stark, which is highly intriguing.

We may take a deeper dive into some of these issues at another time, but for now, at least we have some record, albeit obtained indirectly, of the Air Force even looking into these recent encounters directly and even on a unit level. The question then becomes why weren't we informed about the inquiry's findings? Moreso, what about my other questions? Where did they end up? Could answers have been fielded to those questions, as well?

Sadly we just don't know. In fact, we don't even have a 'no comment at this time' regarding this issue from the Pentagon's spokesperson handling it. In the end, it is in the public's interest to know how the media is being treated by the Department Of Defense on this issue after they themselves helped perpetuate it.

Calling the situation disappointing and bizarre would be a huge understatement.

Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com