It was a calm evening at around 9:20 PM on August 25, 1951, and some professors from the Texas Technological College, now Texas Tech University, were sitting around chatting in the backyard of geology professor Dr. W.I. Robinson’s home in Lubbock, Texas. Joining him were chemical engineering professor Dr. A. G. Oberg, physics professor Dr. George and Dr. W. L. Ducker, who was head of the petroleum-engineering department. As they sat around drinking tea and discussing various scientific subjects, something caught their attention in the sky above, and when they looked up it would begin one of the most famous and well-publicized UFO flaps in United States history.

What those professors saw up there crossing the darkened sky was a V-shaped formation of approximately 20-30 bright blueish-green lights like large stars, which were perfectly circular and quickly passed overhead to be then followed by yet another similar formation moments later. The professors, all esteemed and respected professionals, could not figure out what they had just seen, ruling out conventional aircraft and meteorites, and they excitedly discussed it amongst themselves before going to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal with their strange sighting. It made a lot of waves at the time, simply because these were trained scientists and considered to be very reliable witnesses, of which lead investigator on Project Bluebook, U.S. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt would later say, “If a group had been hand-picked to observe a UFO, we couldn’t have picked a more technically qualified group of people.” Making it even more intriguing still was that they were apparently not the only people who had seen something outlandish in the sky that evening.

There would soon come a report from Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is located about 350 miles away from Lubbock, that supposedly occurred at dusk on that same evening. In this case, a high ranking employee at the highly secretive the Atomic Energy Commission’s Sandia Corporation had been sitting outside with his wife when they a massive, airplane-like object with an array of weird bluish lights along its wings cruise through the sky above. Almost immediately after this there had been a sighting made by a rancher who said he saw a similar V-shaped formation of lights that looked like “an airplane without a body.” Three women in Lubbock would also report having seen the same exact thing at around the same exact time as the professors’ sighting and there would be yet another sighting report from a Dr. Carl Hemminger, a professor of German at Texas Tech.

In the meantime, the professors who had made the original report launched an investigation of their own into the lights over the coming weeks, finding that over a dozen other people had seen them, and indeed they would make 12 more additional sightings of the strange lights themselves. These reports were meticulously detailed, mentioning altitude, direction of movement, wind speed, and angle of travel, and it was all enough to get the attention of Captain Edward J. Ruppelt with the Air Force, and by the time he got involved there had been hundreds of sightings of the lights in the region, with every witness describing the same thing. It was all over the news and captured the imagination of people all over the country, especially those in Lubbock.

One of these curious locals was a Texas Tech freshman named Carl Hart, Jr, who had taken to keeping a lookout through his window in the hopes of seeing the phenomenon for himself. On August 31 he finally got what he wanted, when formations of the lights passed near his house a total of three times. Hart had been keeping vigil with his camera at the ready, and was able to snap a series of photographs of the lights, which would become the public face of what were now being called “The Lubbock Lights.” The pictures received heavy circulation in newspapers and major publications such as Life Magazine, further propelling the mystery of the strange UFO phenomena gripping Texas at the time. The Hart photographs themselves would be analyzed numerous times over the years, and have proven to be frustratingly inconclusive and hotly debated to this day.

One of the Hart photos

Considering the nationwide sensation the Lubbock Lights were becoming, there were a lot of theories as to what they could be. Aircraft, weather balloons, birds reflecting street lights, the ever popular Venus, top secret experimental aircraft, satellites, meteorites, you name it and it was probably proposed at one point or another, yet nothing seems to really completely fit, and the witnesses continue to deny any of those explanations. Captain Edward J. Ruppelt himself would give a rather cryptic summation on what he thought of the lights, saying:

I thought that the professors’ lights might have been some kind of birds reflecting the light from mercury-vapor street lights, but I was wrong. They weren’t birds, they weren’t refracted light, but they weren’t spaceships. The lights that the professors saw…have been positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon…I can’t divulge exactly the way the answer was found because it is an interesting story of how a scientist set up complete instrumentation to track down the lights. Telling the story would lead to his identity and, in exchange for his story, I promised the man complete anonymity… With the most important phase of the Lubbock Lights “solved”—the sightings by the professors—the other phases become only good UFO reports.

Curiously, it remains unknown just what he means by “solved,” or what exact the “answer” really was, and neither Ruppelt nor his Air Force handlers have ever divulged anything more on the matter, leaving it maddeningly ambiguous and murky. The strange case of Lubbock Lights has in the meantime remained unsolved, with little progress in ascertaining just what was going on here. Was this some atmospheric phenomena, experiments with aircraft or rockets, birds, meteorites, or what? What makes this case very perplexing is the sheer amount of very qualified individuals who saw it, and who still stand by the idea that this was something from beyond their conventional understanding. Whatever the Lubbock Lights were, they have gone on to become a much-discussed and puzzling mass UFO sighting that will probably make the rounds for some time to come.

• Special thanks to Steve Baxter for the cover artwork.

It was right around Christmas 1980 when one of the most significant of all UFO encounters occurred in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England – near to the twin-Royal Air Force Bases, Woodbridge and Bentwaters. A memo prepared by the Deputy Base Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt reveals the astonishing facts: “Early in the morning of 27 Dec 80 (approximately 0300L) two USAF security police patrolmen saw unusual lights outside the back gate at RAF Woodbridge. Thinking an aircraft might have crashed or been forced down, they called for permission to go outside the gate to investigate. The on-duty flight chief responded and allowed three patrolmen to proceed on foot. The individuals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest. The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high. It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank(s) of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs. As the patrolmen approached the object, it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared. At this time the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy. The object was briefly sighted approximately an hour later near the back gate.” The notable encounter remains unresolved to this day.

In light of all the above, it’s interesting to note there is a UFO story – from the very same area – that dates way back to 1947. The account came from a man named Ronald Anstee, a long-time UFO researcher who died in November 2006. It transpires that Anstee had secured certain data that revolved around a flying saucer event in the summer months of 1947 – and very near to Rendlesham Forest, no less. The precise date was, and still is, unknown. What we do know, however, is that Anstee’s informant was a family member. Reportedly, the affair involved the sudden and brief appearance out of nowhere of a classic, saucer-shaped, metallic vehicle over RAF Bentwaters. It was said to have been around fifty feet in diameter. Such was the concern over what happened, senior military personnel were flown in and secret meetings were quickly arranged to try and figure out what had happened. The matter was never resolved to Anstee’s satisfaction: he fired off letters to the U.K.’s old Air Ministry, but failed to get meaningful answers. Anstee did, however, state that the presence of the UFO was somehow connected to a then-new radar system in the area. How he knew that, though, I don’t know.

In my 1997 book, A Covert Agenda, I wrote about radar-based research in that very area: “On January 28, 1935, the Tizard Committee, established under the directorship of Sir Henry Tizard, convened its first meeting, which ultimately led to the top secret development of a workable radar system of the type employed in the Second World War. Most pertinent of all, much of that highly classified research was conducted at Bawdsey Manor on the Deben Estuary. It’s just north of the town of Felixstowe, and a mere stone’s throw from what was for so many years the military bases of Royal Air Force Bentwaters and Royal Air Force Woodbridge.”

The reason why I know all of this is simple: I found the correspondence between Anstee and the Air Ministry at the National Archives in Kew, England. This was in 1994, when I spent significant time going through certain, newly-declassified UFO papers. I was able to see that Anstee had written a trio of letters to the Air Ministry – one of which concerned a 1954 UFO sighting of a Royal Air Force pilot named James Salandin. A deeper examination of the National Archives’ papers revealed that the office Anstee dealt with was called Secretariat 6, and whose staff were clearly not keen on getting into correspondence (or worse, into debate) with Anstee. This is made all the more clear by the fact that the only response from Secretariat 6 was to acknowledge they had received Anstee’s letters – and that was it!

It’s doubtful that today – more than seventy years later – we will ever get the answers to this intriguing (but short on data) case. It should be noted, though, that Anstee’s letters to the Air Ministry were written on January 30, March 7 and March 21, 1963. Nineteen-sixty-three was seventeen years before the Rendlesham Forest affair occurred. How intriguing it is then, that in the early 1960s, Anstee was digging into a story of a significant UFO encounter near RAF Bentwaters, which would go on to become known in relation to the Rendlesham case nearly two decades later. A connection? It all depends on how you put the pieces together. The best I can say right now is that one military base was involved in two incidents – and that’s it. Maybe there’s more to it all – but we’re certainly not there yet.

Africa is not typically known by the mainstream for its UFO reports, but it is certainly ground zero for some of the strangest. It began as a calm, peaceful day at Ariel School in the small rural farming community of Ruwa, Zimbabwe, where on September 16, 1994 62 of the school children ranging in age from 5 to 12 years old and of mixed ethnic heritage were out playing in the playground during their break time as their teachers had a school meeting indoors. The air was filled with laughter and merriment, but this was soon to change to gasps of alarm when something very strange materialized out of the unknown. What would transpire next has become one of the most interesting UFO encounters to come out of the continent of Africa, and which has never really been satisfactorily explained.

There was allegedly a bright flash in the sky, and when the children looked up in bafflement, approaching the school were three or four silvery, disc-like objects with what appeared to be lit portals around their edges. These mysterious objects reportedly would vanish and reappear some distance away several times, suggesting that they were either moving very fast or teleporting, before one of the objects began to descend, following some electrical lines towards a brush choked patch of overgrown feral land adjacent to the school grounds, where it eerily descended to disappear behind the gnarled trees and tangled underbrush. At this point the kids were enthralled by what they were seeing, and one of the witnesses would later say of the object:

This thing, whatever it was, was beautiful. It had a circular-shaped bright light as the leader, and behind it were tails of light in beautiful colors: green, orange, and yellow. It moved slowly and looked as if it was just above the house. The amazing thing is that it moved absolutely silently.

The area into which the craft had come down in was off limits to the children, fenced off because it was deemed to be too dangerous, but they pressed as close as they could to this tangle of undergrowth and its barrier to peer within, and they saw only about 100 yards away the mysterious object. It was described as either sitting upon the gnarled weeds or hovering slightly over them, and at this point it still generated amazement in the gawking children. Yet this would change into alarm when the craft seemed to open to disgorge two strange beings, which were described as very thin, frail even, with slender neck and very large, outsized almond shaped, slanting black bug eyes, and dressed in tight-fitting shiny black and silver one-piece suits of some sort. Some witnesses would later say that the entities also possessed long, straight, black hair upon their heads. The enigmatic beings silently approached the children, although some of them would report having received telepathic contact during the encounter. One witness named Emily Trim would later explain of her version of events, saying:

All I can tell you is that two beings were hopping along beside Lisa and I. And … they were curious. They weren’t touching the ground [inaudible] … they were almost like mimicking us. All of a sudden they were in front of us. I describe them as being about arm’s reach. And we were frozen. Telepathic images started going across my face … communication through the eyes … that’s all I can really describe it as. It was just image after image after image. Those thoughts came from the man – the man’s eyes. One of the other girls standing beside me, she got more communication about the environment, and, for me, mine was more technology uses and [inaudible] uses of technology.

For many of the children, especially the younger ones, their astonishment and awe was turning to outright fear, and some of them began crying and screaming as these otherworldly beings frolicked and cavorted about. The creatures then apparently just vanished into thin air, after which the craft rose above the trees and shot off into the distance to leave them awestruck. The children then ran back to the school in a panic and explained the bizarre series of events to the adults, who were at first apprehensive and not a little skeptical about it all. The children were then asked to separately draw pictures of what they had seen, and spookily what was depicted on paper was eerily the same across the board. It was at this point that the adults began to believe that perhaps something really unexplainable had happened out on that rural schoolyard, and that it was not merely the imaginations of a bunch of scared kids.

One of the alien sketches

The incident began making the rounds in the news, helped along by local African UFO researcher Cynthia Hind, and when word got out into the open it attracted the attention of eminent American Harvard psychiatrist, Cambridge Hospital physician, and Pulitzer prize winning author Dr. John E. Mack, who made his way all the way to Zimbabwe to do an investigation. Along with Hind, Mack would spend several days meticulously interviewing witnesses and perusing the sketches the children had made, and they were both impressed with the calm sincerity with which these children told their tales. They came to the distinct conclusion that the kids at least truly believed that this had all happened, and that these were reliable witnesses, made even more remarkable due to the fact that many of these rural children had never even heard of UFOs before. Mack would become convinced that they were telling the truth, whatever that meant, and would say:

[The children] experienced a very powerful encounter with these beings and we’re left with a rather disturbing fact that this seems to be what it is and it seems to have no other psychiatric explanation. I would never say, yes, there are aliens taking people. [But] I would say there is a compelling powerful phenomenon here that I can’t account for in any other way. Yet I can’t know what it is but it seems to me that it invites a deeper, further inquiry.

This was pretty remarkable because Mack was far from some crackpot, being a highly respected psychiatrist at the top of his field, but it seems that it may have been detrimental to his career as his peers, who did not share his view that this was a real UFO event. Indeed, others in the psychiatric field looked upon the whole thing with raised eyebrows at best, and sheer scorn at worst, with one Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins Medical School calling Mack, “a brilliant fellow who occasionally loses it, and this time he’s lost it big time.” It probably didn’t help that Mack had written a book on alien abductions called, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, which had also somewhat tarnished his credibility among his peers and caused him to be labelled as a bit out there. It got to the point that Mack was actually investigated by a committee looking into whether he was really fit to provide clinical care and investigation for these people, the first time a tenured Harvard professor had ever been subjected to such an inquiry. Mack would say of the letter he received from the dean informing him of this:

One of the deans at the Harvard Medical School handed me a letter that called for the establishment of a small committee to investigate my work [on the alien abduction phenomenon]. After explaining vaguely that ‘concerns’ had been expressed to the university about what I was doing (although he told of no specific complaint, nor was any offered in the letter), he added pleasantly – for he had been a friend and colleague – that I would not have gotten into trouble if I had not suggested in the book [Abduction] that my findings might require a change in our view of reality, rather than saying that I had found a new psychiatric syndrome whose cause had not yet been established.

Mack would later be found by the Dean to be clear and free to “study what he wishes and to state his opinions without impediment.” Sadly, Mack would die in 2004 after being hit by a drunk driver in London, but his work lives on, and remains some of the best and deepest ever done into the Ariel School UFO encounter. In 2007, filmmaker Randall Nickerson travelled to Zimbabwe to make a documentary on the incident, interviewing witnesses further and sort of carrying on the torch from Mack’s work, yet it has still become a mostly rather obscure and forgotten case.

As for the witnesses themselves, it is interesting to note that even all of these years later, now adults, they still remember vividly that day and continue to stand by their stories. It is a remarkable case in that all of these kids, across ages and cultural and ethnic divides, managed to give the same exact story and stick with it well into adulthood when the case had already come and gone in the public conciousness. Along with the intrepid research of Hind and Mack, both of whom expressed genuine intrigue and cited the believability of the accounts, it certainly seems to be an obscure report that is deserving of consideration. No matter what happened on that day, the Ariel School incident had remained a little-known, but very pervasive UFO account in African UFO lore, and remains discussed to this day.

New Hampshire is a mandatory stop on all presidential campaigns … in fact, multiple visits are generally required before the state’ early and influential primary (held on February 11 this year). However, some candidates stumping in the “Live Free or Die” state have been opting to ‘sneak out and live’ when it comes to answering tough questions about UFO, X-files and full disclosure by an intrepid reporter for The Conway Daily Sun, which has been holding informal question-and-answer sessions for all presidential campaign visitors. Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Andrew Yang and some of the lesser-known candidates have already given a variety of answers. The latest were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. Let’s see if their UFO views can influence your vote.

“I have not. To be very honest with you. It’s not something that I’ve been spending a lot of time on.”

Tulsi Gabbard

• That’s Tulsi Gabbard’s entire answer to Daymond Steer’s question about whether she’s given any thoughts to the recent revelations about UFO encounters in 2004 with US military jets (a New Hampshire resident was one of the pilots) from the USS Nimitz. (Watch the entire interview here. Question is around 42:30.) That brief response was surprising, given Gabbard’s openness in the rest of her interview, her own personal experience as a veteran still serving and her current membership on many congressional defense committees. Gabbard served in the Hawaii Army National Guard and had a 12-month deployment in Iraq in 2004. After being commissioned as a second lieutenant, she served in Kuwait in 2008 and 2009. Gabbard is now a major in the Hawaii Army National Guard.
• More interesting is the list of congressional committees Gabbard serves on. At the top are the
  Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities and Subcommittee on Readiness – both would seem to be places where Gabbard might have heard about military encounters with UFOs, whether they be alien or foreign military crafts. She is also the founder and co-chair of the Diversifying Technology Caucus, co-chair of the Range and Testing Center Caucus and a member of the Missile Defense Caucus. While it’s true that she’s also a member of dozens of other caucuses, as an active member of the military it would seem obvious that she’d have an interest in and exposure to military UFO encounters. Perhaps she does … and doesn’t want to or can’t talk about them. Would that change if she’s elected?

Bernie Sanders

• Another candidate who was a little more loquacious was Bernie Sanders. While he exclaimed “Let’s not jump the gun here!” when asked if he’d be interested if UFOs were using green technology, Sanders admitted that “my wife would never forgive me” if he didn’t look into UFOs if elected. (Watch the entire interview here. Question is around 42:00) He also we should look into unexplained encounters like the Nimitiz incident” if they’re true.” Sanders had fun with the question but gave a serious answer.
• Who’s next on New Hampshire’s UFO hotseat? They haven’t yet heard from Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren. Whoever the Democratic nominee might be, will President Trump answer the same question? He’s already said “Not particularly” when asked if he believes in UFOs. Would he be able to avoid answering if asked again by Daymond Steer?

Have you made up your mind yet?

If you’re someone who watches for UFOs (and who isn’t these days), you may want to avoid doing it in the state of New York. The Empire State isn’t prone to abductions (at least, not of the alien kind) but it is prone to requiring permits for everything (ask any New York street vendor) and now it’s requiring permits for spotting UFOs. Before you ask … we are NOT making this up!

STARGAZING PERMIT
Requirements:
Fee of $35.00, $60-Out of State – Vehicle Registration and Driver’s License Required
Permit allows after sunset parking for stargazing only, valid January 1 – December 31 at:
Hither Hills – Except July & August
Jones Beach – West End 2 and Field 6
Montauk Point – Upper Parking Lot
Robert Moses – Field 2
Gov. Alfred E. Smith/Sunken Meadow – Field 1 & Field 3
Wildwood – Main Parking Lot
Sold at: Babylon Headquarters-Permit Office (beginning January 2nd), Jones Beach, Montauk Downs,
Robert Moses, Governor Alfred E. Smith/Sunken Meadow and Wildwood
Stargazing Permits are only sold January 1 – March 31 and the Tuesday after Labor Day –
December 31.

Obviously, you don’t want to tell the park ranger you don’t need a permit because you’re UFO spotting, not stargazing. Both involve looking up at the night sky, which seems to be the logical issue here. The permit from the Park, Recreation and Historic Preservation Department is obviously designed to cut down on night traffic in some popular parks on Long Island, although it’s not for ‘driving’ but for ‘stargazing’, so it affects those who walk, Uber or take public transportation too. It also doesn’t say of the permit is for one vehicle or one person. Oh, and before you ask … yes, these are public parks paid for with your (if you’re a New Yorker) tax dollars.

You have the right to remain silent …

There are so many questions, it’s hard to pick a place to start. Why charge out-of-staters extra? Do stargazers and UFO spotters from New Jersey litter more than New Yorkers? Why does it require a driver’s license? That seems to be discriminatory against those without licenses for whatever reason. What do those license go towards? Will the park use them to remove curbs, logs, boulders and other obstructions so stargazers and UFO watchers don’t trip while not looking where they’re walking? Some cities are doing this for walking cellphone users … why not make THEM get a permit first? They definitely outnumber stargazers and UFO watchers. How soon before this gets applied to other New York parks? Public streets? Rooftops of government housing?

There’s more. How will a park ranger decide if a person who face is turned towards the night sky is looking at stars or bats or UFOs or something else? Isn’t this unfair to the person on the bottom of a couple having traditional missionary sex on the grass? Will displaying the permit allow them to have traditional missionary sex without being bothered if one (or if they’re kinky, both) are facing skyward?

Crowd surfer or illegal UFO spotter?

Is this fair? Is this American? Is this extortion? Is this New York gouging its citizens and tourists again?

Neil deGrasse Tyson
@neiltyson
No. Back in the day, you didn’t need permission to look up at the sky

This is not a left or right issue – the permit fees will be collected no matter who is in office. If you live in New York, contact Governor Cuomo’s office and voice your concerns. If you plan to visit New York, be careful where you look up. If you get stopped, tell the ranger you have a stiff neck. If he asks for a doctor’s note … welcome to New York. You’re screwed.

The skies are free. Looking for stars, UFOs or whatever you seek in the heavens is a right. Keep your heads up!

My previous article was focused on the latest episode of History Channel’s Project Blue Book. That same episode was on the subject of Roswell. It mentioned a story – near the end of the show – told in Annie Jacobsen’s 2011 book, Area 51. In her book, Jacobsen tells of how she was able to speak with an elderly man who would have been in the right place and at the right time to know what really happened at Roswell in July 1947. According to Jacobsen’s source/whistle-blower (who was outed by UFO researcher Tony Bragalia as an elderly man named Alfred O’Donnell) what came down outside of Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947 was not a UFO from another world. Nor was it a weather-balloon or a Mogul balloon. And, apparently, there was not even a single crash-test dummy anywhere in sight. O’Donnell made the controversial claim that the craft and its crew originated in the Soviet Union.

O’Donnell said that Joseph Stalin – the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952 and Premier from 1941 to 1953 – was the driving force behind what was, supposedly, a diabolical, manipulative plot designed to make the U.S. government and the people of the United States think that an alien invasion was underway. The purpose: to plunge America into a state of overwhelming terror. And how did the Soviets supposedly try and achieve this? By (A) having Josef Mengele (one of the most vile, evil, deranged figures who ever lived) surgically alter a number of children, to make them appear alien-like; and (B) using the aircraft designs of a pair of brothers in the world of aviation (Reimar and Walter Horten), and have them create a strange-looking aircraft. The plot, then, was to try and make the U.S. government believe that aliens had come to Earth – and, in the process, causing terror and hysteria in the United States. The story continues that the whole thing collapsed when the “alien spacecraft” fell to earth outside of Roswell, and was promptly and secretly retrieved by the U.S. military. The outcome: the Russians’ plot collapsed and what happened at Roswell was quickly hidden.

There are significant reasons to believe that the story O’Donnell told was not true. Without doubt, one of the most important official documents in the saga of the story told to Annie Jacobsen by Alfred O’Donnell is a certain December 1947 document. It addresses U.S. Intelligence’s deep interest in the Horten brothers – as well as the U.S. Government’s determination to confirm or deny that the brothers had created a flying saucer-style craft. The document is so important (and lengthy!) that I have presented it below, in full. The author of the document was Lieutenant Colonel Harry H. Pretty, and the title of the document was Horten Brothers (Flying Saucers). Prepared by the HQ Berlin Command, Office of Military Government for Germany (US), it was sent to the Deputy Director of Intelligence, European Command, Frankfurt, U.S. Army. And it reads as follows:

‘The Horten brothers, Reimar and Walter, are residing in Goettingen at present. However, both of them are traveling a great deal throughout the Bi-Zone. Walter at present is travelling in Bavaria in search of a suitable place of employment. It is believed that he may have contacted USAFE Headquarters in Wiesbaden for possible evacuation to the United States under ‘Paper Clip.’ Reimar is presently studying advanced mathematics at the university of Bonn, and is about to obtain his doctor’s degree. It is believed that when his studies are completed he intends to accept a teaching position at the Institute for Technology (Technische Hochschule) in Braunshweig sometime in February or March 1948.

“Both brothers are exceedingly peculiar and can be easily classified as eccentric and individualistic. Especially is this so of Reimar. He is the one who developed the theory of the flying wing and subsequently of all the models and aircrafts built by the brothers. Walter, on the other hand is the engineer who tried to put into practice the several somewhat fantastic ideas of his brother. The clash of personalities resulted in a continuous quarrel and friction between the two brothers. Reimar was always developing new ideas which would increase the speed of the aircraft or improve its maneuverability; Walter on the other hand was tearing down the fantastic ideas of his brother by practical calculations and considerations.

Horten IX engineering drawing

“The two men worked together up to and including the ‘Horten VIII’ a flying wing intended to be a fighter plane powered with two Hirt engines (HM-60-R) with a performance of approximately 650 horsepower each. After the ‘Horten VIII’ was finished, one of the usual and frequent quarrels separated the two brothers temporarily. Walter went to work alone on the ‘Horten IX,’ which is a fighter plane of the flying wing design, with practically no changes from the model VIII except for the engines. Walter substituted the Hirt engines with BMW Jets of the type TL-004. The plane was made completely of plywood and was furnished with a Messerschmitt ME-109 landing gear.

“The model of this aircraft (Horten IX) was tested extensively in the supersonic wind tunnel (Mach No. 1.0) of the aero-dynamic testing institute (Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt), located in Goettingen. The tests were conducted in the late summer of 1944 under the personal supervision of Professor Betz, chief of the institute. Betz at that time was approximately sixty years old and next to Prandtel (then seventy-eight years old), was considered to be the best man on aerodynamics in Germany. Betz’s attitude toward the flying wing is very conservative to say the least. Basically he is against the design of any flying wing. According to the official reports about the tests, air disturbances were created on the wing tips, resulting in air vacuums, which in turn would prevent the steering mechanism from functioning properly. This seems logical as, of course, neither the ailerons nor the rudders could properly accomplish their function in a partial vacuum created by air disturbances and whirls.

“In spite of that, two Horten IX’s were built and tried out by a test pilot, Eugen (now living in Goettingen) at Rechlin in the fall of 1944. One of the two planes, piloted by another test pilot, developed trouble with one of the jet engines while the pilot was trying to ascertain the maximum rate of climb. The right jet stopped suddenly, causing the aircraft to go into an immediate spin and subsequent crash in which the pilot was killed. Eugen, however, was more fortunate in putting the other ship through all the necessary paces without the least trouble. He maintains that the maximum speed attained was around 950 km per hour, and that there were no steering difficulties whatsoever, and that the danger of both head and tail spins was no greater that any other conventional aircraft.

“After extensive tests, the Horten IX was accepted by the German Air Force as represented by Goering, who ordered immediate mass production. The first order went to Gothaer Waggon Fabrik, located in Gotha (Thuringia) in January 1945. Goering requested that ten planes be built immediately and that the entire factory was to concentrate and be converted to the production of the Horten IX. The firm in question received all the plans and designs of the ship. In spite of this explicit order, production of the Horten IX was never started. The technical manager of the firm, Berthold, immediately upon receipt of the plans, submitted a number of suggestions to improve the aircraft. It is believed that his intention was to eliminate the Horten brothers as inventors and to modify the ship to such an extent that it would be more his brain child than anybody else’s. Numerous letters were exchanged from High Command of the German Air Force and Dr. Berthold, which finally were interrupted by the armistice in May 1945. When US troops occupied the town of Gotha, the designs of the Horten IX were kept in hiding and not handed over to American Military authorities. The original designs in possession of the Horten brothers were hidden in a salt mine in Salzdettfurt, but the model tested by Eugen was destroyed in April 1945. The original designs were recovered from Salzdettfurt by British authorities in the summer of 1945.

The Horten IX

(Wikipedia)

“The Horten brothers, together with Dr. Betz, Eugen and Dr. Stueper (the test pilot of the aerodynamic institute in Goettingen), were invited to go to England in the late summer of 1945 where they remained for approximately ninety days. They were interrogated and questioned about their ideas and were given several problems to work on. However Reimar was very unwilling to cooperate to any extent whatsoever, unless an immediate contract was offered to him and his brother. Walter, on the other hand, not being a theoretician, was unable to comply and Reimar was sufficiently stubborn not to move a finger. Upon their return to Goettingen Walter remained in contact with British authorities and was actually paid a salary by the British between October 1945 and April 1946, as the British contemplated but never did offer him employment. Walter subsequently had a final argument with his brother and the two decided to part. Reimar then went to the university of Bonn to obtain his degree, and Walter organized an engineering office in Goettingen which served as a cover firm to keep him out of trouble with the labor authorities. Walter married Fraulein von der Groeben, an extremely intelligent woman, former chief secretary to Air Force General Udet.

“In the spring of 1947 Walter Horten heard about the flying wing design in the United states by Northrop and decided to write Northrop for employment. He was answered in the summer of 1947 by a letter in which Northrop pointed out that he, himself, could not do anything to get him over to the States, but that he would welcome it very much if he could come to the United States and take up employment with the firm. He recommended that Walter should get in touch with USAFE Headquarters in Wiesbaden in order to obtain necessary clearance.

“As can be seen from the above, most of the Hortens’ work took place in Western Germany. According to our source, neither of the brothers ever had any contact with any representative of the Soviet Air Force or any other foreign power. In spite of the fact that Reimar is rather disgusted with the British for not offering him a contract, it is believed very unlikely that he has approached the Soviet authorities in order to sell out to them. The only possible link between the Horten brothers and the Soviet authorities is the fact that a complete set of plans and designs were hidden at the Gothaer Waggon Fabrik and the knowledge of this is known by Dr. Berthold and a number of other engineers. It is possible and likely that either Berthold or any of the others having knowledge of the Horten IX would have sold out to the Soviet authorities for one of a number of reasons. However, this will be checked upon in the future, and it is hoped that contact with the Gothaer Waggon Fabrik can be established.

“As far as the ‘flying saucer’ is concerned, a number of people were contacted in order to verify whether or not any such design at any time was contemplated or existed in the files of any German air research institute. The people contacted included the following: Walter Horten.
Fraulein von der Groeben, former Secretary to Air Force General Udet Guenter. Heinrich, former office for research of the High Command of the Air Force in Berlin. Professor Betz, former chief of Aerodynamic Institute in Goettingen. Eugen, former test pilot.

“All the above mentioned people contacted independently and at different times are very insistent on the fact that to their knowledge and belief no such design ever existed nor was projected by any of the German air research institutions. While they agree that such a design would be highly practical and desirable, they do not know anything about its possible realization now or in the past.”

Unloading a captured Horten IX

( Wikipedia)

That’s where we end with the text of the document. It is valuable on two counts: it’s clear that certain elements of U.S. Intelligence and the military were interested in, and concerned by, the possibility that the Horten brothers had developed some kind of radical, flying saucer-type aircraft. But, as the document also shows, no such evidence was ever found. Of course, those who buy into the Stalin-Mengele angle would likely say that the truth of the Roswell affair was buried so deeply that not even the team that went searching for the answers, and which appear in Lieutenant Pretty’s report, had access to such highly-classified data. The fact is, though, that none of the available data or documentation at all confirmed the Horten brothers succeeded in creating and flying a craft that most people would describe as a UFO. It was all rumor.

When it comes to the story as told to Annie Jacobsen by Alfred O’Donnell, there are two, main possibilities: the story of the Russian/Nazi saucers, the terribly-altered children, and the plan to destabilize the United States by creating a faked alien intrusion, is either (A) true or (B) disinformation. Personally, I find the scenario of surgically-altered children remotely flown to the United States, and all the way from Russia, to be far more unlikely than the idea that aliens crashed. And, also with regard to my skepticism, there are the two most important questions of all. The first goes like this: if the Russians had indeed got their hands on a Horten-built – or a Horten-inspired – aircraft that could perform all kinds of aerial feats, and out-perform anything that the United States was flying at the time, then why on earth would they allow such a technologically-advanced craft to fall into the hands of the U.S. military? That angle makes no sense at all. It would be akin to the United States, in the Second World War, handing over the secrets of the atomic bomb to Adolf Hitler. When those poor children exited the craft and stood before shocked government officials – which was surely a major part of the Soviet plan – U.S. authorities would have grabbed the craft immediately. And the Russians must have known that the American military would do exactly that.

That latter point leads into the second and final question: if the Soviets were so intent on having the U.S. Government believe that the object which came down at Roswell was extraterrestrial, what the hell would have prompted them to have on display, inside the craft, what Jacobsen described as “Russian writing,” and as “letters from the Cyrillic alphabet?” Such an instant giveaway would have completely and quickly ruined Stalin’s plans to deceive America. Unless, of course, you believe that aliens speak and write in Russian, which is an even more bullshit scenario. Over the years, Ufology has been infiltrated by Nazi-loving scum. It would not surprise me at all if O’Donnell may have been deceived by just such a figure;, someone in Ufology looking to fly the flag of those pathetic, scum-fucks known as the “master race.”

Sometimes UFOs show up in the most seemingly unlikely of places. The area of New York’s Hudson River Valley is known for its quaint, historical beauty, agriculture, and as a prominent winemaking region. Here many educated professionals have their homes in upscale neighborhoods, and it is one of the last places one would expect to be ground zero for some of the most intense UFO activity there is, yet for a few years starting from 1981, the peaceful Hudson River Valley began to gain a reputation as a hotspot for otherworldly phenomena that has generated much discussion to this day.

The beginning of it all is widely thought to have been on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1981, when an unnamed off-duty police officer was out in the yard of his home in Kent, New York, with his family just a few minutes before the start of the new year, but this was to prove to be a bit more exciting than usual. Off in the distance they spied a group of red, green, and white lights that were approaching from the south, and which they at fist just took to be a plane. However, as the object approached it could be seen that rather than a plane, the multicolored lights were embedded within a boomerang-shaped craft of some sort, which slowly passed right over their heads at a height of around 500 feet while issuing only an eerie, faint humming sound. On several occasions the lights were reported as shifting from multicolored to an all-white coloration in different patterns, and this was quite obviously no normal aircraft.

It would turn out that there were many other witnesses to this incident at the time, as on nearby Interstate 84 several motorists also observed the object and were so awed by it that they stopped their vehicles along the road to watch it make its inscrutable journey across the sky. One of these motorists was 55-year-old Edwin Hansen, who would explain that the massive boomerang or V-shaped object was big enough to block out the stars, and could be seen to project some sort of light beam to the ground. Oddly, Hansen would also claim that he had made what he believed to be some sort of telepathic contact with the craft, his mind filled with strange images and thoughts that were not his own and the sensation that something was reading his mind and telling him to not be afraid.

This was to prove to be far from a one-off sighting of an unidentified flying object, and the strangeness would resume in February of the following year. On February 26, 1982, a witness by the name of Monique O’Driscoll was driving with her daughter when they saw a strange light in the sky that seemed to take up position over a frozen lake. When they stopped the car they could see that it was a large V-shaped object with numerous red, blue, and amber lights dotting it, as well as an underside crisscrossed by some sort of metal beams. At one point the object seemed to approach them, giving them a bit of a scare, before making its way off into the night. This object would be seen by quite a few other witnesses as well, and the police office would get a deluge of panicked calls at the time. Whatever it was did not seem to be finished frightening the area’s residents, as on March 17, 1983 it was seen again by a few witnesses in Brewster, New York, including by the Deputy Clerk for Putnam County Dennis Sant, who saw it from his home. Sant was left utterly baffled by the bizarre incident, as well as not a little frightened, and he describes what he saw thusly:

It was a very large object. The structure of it was very dark gray, metallic, almost girder-type looking. The object seemed to be very silent. The lights were iridescent, bright, they stood out in the sky and three-dimension. It looked like a city of lights. It just hung in the sky, all brilliant colors… We followed the object around to the backyard. And at that point, a feeling of fright came upon me. Thoughts started to flood my mind, thoughts of the craft touching ground, thoughts of an encounter with an alien being.  Thoughts of being abducted. All types of fearful thoughts started to enter into my mind.

As with the other sightings, it was described as being a large boomerang-shaped craft, around 131 feet long, and more than 330 feet wide, with a multitude of bright red, green, amber and white lights along its fuselage, and it was largely silent. This incident would lead into another just a week later, when the object appeared on March 24, 1983 in the areas of Yorktown and New Castle to set off a whole new wave of sightings. Police began getting a flood of calls from people seeing weird things in the sky, all describing the same V-shaped lighted craft mostly described as being as large as a football field, although there were also reports of smaller objects dating through the sky or even two in different locations at the same time, suggesting there was more than one of them. Among the witnesses were several police officers, and one Officer Andi Sadoff of the New Castle Police explains what he saw as follows:

I was working a 4 PM to midnight tour and assigned to set up some radar to look for speeding cars and I looked up into the sky and saw a series of lights. And at first I thought it was a plane, it was quite a distance, quite far away, but it was, it was really quite large.  As I recall, there were mostly white lights, but there were green lights also. It was alternating green and white lights. It approached my vehicle and it stopped and it seemed to hover. And I’m looking at this thing, thinking what is it? I wasn’t afraid. I was just amazed. I was in awe of it. I didn’t know what it was. The only thing that I recall the most is I was amazed that there was no noise. There was no humming. There was no engine, there was no sound. It was absolutely silent.

This particular report was supported by another that occurred at exactly the same time, this time the witness being a senior manager for IBM by the name of Ed Burns. He was only about 10 miles away from Officer Sadoff, and says that he was first clued in to something strange going on when his radio started acting oddly. Burns says:

Out of nowhere, I got a lot of static on the radio. I thought maybe I was on the wrong number, and then I went over to turn the dial again and that’s when I looked up and saw this craft. It was a triangular ship. And the back had to be as large as a football field at least. And there was no noise. I’m not into astronomy… but what I had witnessed that night was not from this planet.

The ship seemed to generate sightings all up and down the valley on this evening, startling motorists and spotted numerous times by police officers, and the following evening the object was seen by various people yet again. The apperance was always nearly identical; large, descriptions like “as big as a football field” or as large as an aircraft carrier” were thrown around, V-shaped or triangular, the lights studding the exterior. However, interestingly, the reports showed varied behavior for the object or objects, such as that they would shoot beams of light, spin around like a top, shoot away at fantastic speeds, display patterns of colors with their lights, detach what appeared to be smaller craft from the main body, or wink in and out of existence. One witness named Jim Booke, a biomedical engineer, allegedly saw it silently circle over the Croton Falls Reservoir dropping what seemed to be lighted probes into the water and shooting a red beam of light into the reservoir, and indeed the object seemed to often stop over bodies of water. It all left people absolutely baffled, and this time the incident hit the news in a major way, finally catching the attention of UFO researchers Philip J. Imbrogno and J. Allen Hynek, who had been a senior consultant on the Air Force’s Project Blue Book.

The Hudson River Valley

Imbrogno and Hynek arrived in the area and began interviewing as many witnesses to the UFOs that kept appearing as they could. They also set up a phone hotline for people who had seen the objects and very quickly received hundreds of calls, which along with the floods of calls police had received caused them to estimate that there were perhaps thousands of people out there who had observed the phenomenon on March 24 alone, the majority of these being from along the Taconic Parkway. Many of the witnesses were found to be reliable and upstanding citizens, and all of them described the same enormous boomerang shaped craft. The two researchers became convinced that something very off was going on, but the police had other ideas.

According to law enforcement authorities, the whole thing was a prank being pulled by normal ultralight planes or helicopters flying in formation in such a way as to seem more mysterious. The Federal Aviation Administration agreed with this theory, as did officials from nearby Stewart Air Force Base. Supporting the plane theory even futher was a report from an air traffic control specialist named Anthony Capaldi, who also had seen the phenomenon but had come to the conclusion that it was planes in formation. He would say:

The first time I observed the formation, it looked a little peculiar. And from our vantage point in the tower, they just appeared to be just one big light because they were flying in tight formation. I don’t think if this formation flew over an individual’s head at a thousand feet that there’s any way you could mistake it for anything but the formation flying, due to the sound of the aircraft engines. And I imagine that at a thousand feet, you could really determine that it’s aircraft.

There was also a certified hoax when some prankish night pilots buzzed over the region in April of 1983, but interestingly most people who saw this formation immediately recognized them as planes, the same of which could not be said of the other waves of sightings. In fact, many of the witnesses insisted that they knew the difference between planes and what they had seen, and refused to believe that the objects were normal aircraft. This, plus the fact that besides the April hoax no one had ever been caught in the act and there were no suspects, as well as the fact that ultralight planes would unlikely be able to remain so silent and pull off the aerial activities witnessed or hold formation so well, and that so many people had reported these UFOs, Imbrogno and Hynek came to the conclusion that planes in formation were not an acceptable explanation.

In the meantime, the waves of sightings continued, with another on March 31, yet again that summer on July 12, 19, and 24, and yet another the following year on March 25, 1984, each one of these waves generating hundreds of sightings. Some of these reports were rather unsettling, such as a crew at the Indian Point Nuclear Plant, who claimed that the massive craft had hovered over one of the nuclear reactors and caused the facility’s security systems to shut down, which had caused the supervisor to almost have his men open fire upon it, before it suddenly shot off into the night. Even more such sightings flaps would pop up in the coming years until it seemed to stop in 1986. Imbrogno and Hynek would estimate that more than 5,000 people had seen these objects, and they would write an entire book on it titled Night Siege: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings. They also were able to find some certain idiosyncrasies among all of the data they managed to collect, such as that the sightings were clustered very tightly and seemed to fall on Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights to a disproportionate degree. what this means is anyone’s guess.

Considering the sheer number of independent sightings in the Hudson River Valley between 1981 to 1986, the consistency of the reports, and the number of trained observers, as well as the intensity of it all over the course of years, it certainly seems as though, although some people may have tried to imitate it and hoax it, the phenomenon itself remains mired in mystery. Indeed, the UFO flaps of the Hudson River Valley have never really been satisfactorily explained, and are some of the most widely witnessed UFO phenomena ever seen. What was going on here? Was this just misidentified aircraft and hoaxers as the authorities would like us to believe, or is there something more to it all? If these really were visitors from another world, then what did they want and what brought them to this specific place at these specific times? It is likely we will never know, and the mystery remains a classic case within UFOlogy.

“It had been assessed that it would be better to publish these records, rather than continue sending documents to the National Archives, and so they are looking to put them onto a dedicated gov.uk web page.”

While U.S. presidential candidates make vague promises that they will release the government’s secret UFO files if elected and the U.S. Navy debates the security ramifications of releasing any more information on the infamous “Tic-Tac” UFOs, the British government isn’t waiting for an election to let it’s public see anything and everything that’s in its X-files. Numerous British publications and online media sites have been reporting the comments of an anonymous RAF spokesperson who responded to a Freedom of Information request submitted by PA Media, a multimedia news agency. The release will take place “some time within the first quarter of 2020.”

“When I worked on the MoD’s ‘UFO desk’ we didn’t find definitive proof of extraterrestrial visitation, but there were so many bizarre and unexplained sightings that we didn’t entirely rule it out.”

That statement could be made by no one but Nick Pope, journalist and former Ministry of Defence employee who had his hand in investigating many of those files. Unfortunately, the RAF spokesperson squelched hopes that there would be some dirt on aliens in the release.

“The MoD has no viewpoint on the existence or otherwise of excess terrestrial existence and does not look into UFO reports.”

Don’t look to the U.S. government – now or after the election – to fill in the blanks with their own release of American X-files. UFO researcher Christian Lambright sent a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request to the Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) for records ON THE Nimitz Tic-Tac UFOs incident shortly after it came out. He recently got an answer.

“Specifically, under Section 1.4, the materials would trigger protections under subcategory c), the Intelligence Activities of the United States, as well as the Sources and Methods that are being used to gather information in support of the National Security of the United States. In addition, the materials would trigger protections under subcategory e), Scientific and Technological Matters related to the National Security of the United States. For this reason, the materials are exempt from release under the (b) (1) Exemption for Classified Matters of National Defense. As a result these records may not be released and are being withheld.”

It’s highly likely that the British and U.S. X-files have similar, and probably some identical, information. Why is the British government dragging its files out from under a rock into the broad public daylight, while the U.S. government continues to hide theirs in an Indiana Jones secret warehouse? Could the U.S. be waiting to see what the British have (does anyone really believe we don’t already know?) and how their public reacts to it? Is our government really so afraid of riots in the streets if it releases a bombshell like the existence of extraterrestrials? Why won’t the same thing happen if some other country releases that info first?

We’ve seen lately what happens to whistleblowers. We’ve also seen what happens when the government tries to cover things up. We all want to believe in the existence of other life forms and their ability to visit us in sophisticated flying machines. Unfortunately, we’re at the mercy of an unsophisticated power system bent on keeping knowledge away from us.

Who will win? Let’s hope the British X-files answer our questions and we don’t have to wait for the U.S. government anymore.