Some UFO witnesses come with an impeccable pedigree, and really serve to bolster the claims that something weird is going on in our skies. When talking about a credible witness, the credentials of U.S. Senator Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. are beyond reproach. A politician from the state of Georgia, he served 38 years in the Senate, becoming one of its most powerful and influential members during his service from 1937 to 1963, and also served as the Governor of Georgia from 1931 to 1933, as well as chairman of the Armed Services Committee from 1951 to 1969, even seeking the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1952 unsuccessfully, and at the time of his death in 1971 he was one of the most senior and influential senators of all time. He would certainly seem to be an incredibly qualified witness, and he would have a UFO sighting that would be covered up and show that even the highest up can have such experiences.

In 1955, Russell was the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and was on a fact-finding trip through Russia along with his military aide Lt. Col. Hathaway and interpreter Ruben Efron. On October 4, 1955, they were travelling by train through the remote Transcaucasus region when Russell looked out the window and spotted two disc-shaped UFOs taking off from a spot near the tracks. He immediately called for his aide and interpreter, who also saw the strange sight. Col. Hathaway would later say of the incident:

I doubt if you are going to believe this, but we all saw it. Senator Russell was the first to see this flying disc we’ve been told for years that there isn’t such a thing, but all of us saw it. One disc ascended almost vertically, at a relatively slow speed, with its outer surface revolving slowly to the right, to an altitude of about 6000 feet, where its speed then increased sharply as it headed north. The second flying disc was seen performing the same actions about one minute later. The take-off area was about 1-2 miles south of the rail line.

U.S. Senator Richard Brevard Russell, Jr.

The three men reported the sighting to the U.S. Air Force, being interviewed by a Lieut. Col. Thomas Ryan, who was the air attaché at the U.S. embassy in Prague, Czechoslovakia, shortly after the incident, with Ryan saying, “The three observers were firmly convinced that they saw a genuine flying disc.” They were also interviewed by the CIA, who also interviewed a fourth unnamed witness whose name would be redacted, and who said the objects had a “slight dome” and a “white light” on top. The CIA found that the three witnesses described visibility as excellent during the encounter, that they had seen no sign of a trail or heard any discernible noise from the craft, which had a pinkish glow, and that the objects “rose vertically with the glow moving slowly around the perimeter in a clockwise direction, giving the appearance of a pinwheel.” The Air Force then went about putting it completely under wraps, as did the Russian government, and it was labelled top secret. Senator Russell also refused to go public with the matter, keeping tight-lipped about it all in the aftermath of the sighting. He refused to talk about it any further, and when approached by the Los Angeles Examiner’s Tom Towers Russell in 1956 he told him:

Permit me to acknowledge your letters relative to reports that have come to you regarding aerial objects seen in Europe last year. I received your letter, but I have discussed this matter with the affected agencies of the government, and they are of the opinion that it is not wise to publicize this matter at this time. I regret very much that I am unable to be of assistance to you.

It seems as if the whole affair was being subdued by the government, and it would all remain top secret until it got out into the open in 1985 when it was declassified after numerous Freedom of Information Act requests by Dr. Bruce Maccabee, of the Fund for UFO Research. Maccabee was very excited about the release of these documents, saying:

These long secret documents are of major importance because they show for the first time that one of the most powerful U.S. Senators witnessed and reported a UFO. Because they were no doubt advised not to talk. These documents provide startling new evidence that UFOs exist.

It is a curious case, in that the witness is so traditionally reliable, and the object was seen by others within his entourage, making it difficult to fully write off. There seems to be no reason why such a respectable politician would want to make up such a tale, and further making it curious are the efforts made to keep it all hush hush, prevent Russell from talking about it, and hide it from the public eye. What is the meaning of this encounter and what place does it have in the UFO phenomenon? There seems to be no further information, and it will probably remain another compelling, if ultimately frustrating account that we will never get to the bottom of.

During the course of the events that occurred in and around Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England in December 1980, rumors circulated suggesting that radar tapes were taken from the Royal Air Force Watton base by U.S. Air Force personnel, who wanted to examine the alleged UFO evidence and see what, exactly, the tapes showed. This part of the story began in January 1981 with a writer named Paul Begg. It turns out that Begg knew a serviceman who was aware of something of the UFO incidents. It wasn’t long before Jenny Randles was able to speak with this particular source. Not wanting to jeopardize the man’s career, Randles chose to refer to him as “David Potts.” It was Potts who was able to put the pieces together. Potts told Randles that it was on December 29 when the Americans turned up at RAF Watton. Jenny learned that they took not just the radar-based data, but even the logbook for the relevant time. There was a very strange facet to all of this: the U.S. agents openly stated to their Royal Air Force counterparts that they needed the material because a craft from another world had come down in Rendlesham Forest. And they had orders to secure and scrutinize whatever material was available. While there is no reason at all to think that Potts was lying, the fact is that U.S. intelligence operatives simply would not stroll into a U.K. military base and loudly spout off about a crashed UFO. That’s not how the military works. And it’s certainly not how secrets are kept.

Clearly, and obviously, the Americans were there to further sow the seeds of the UFO story that had been created to hide the truth of the December experiments. No doubt, they knew that those who worked at RAF Watton, and who had been told the story by their American colleagues, would have a hard time keeping quiet on a hot potato like that! And, as history has shown, David Potts did not stay quiet. He went on to become a significant figure in the radar-based angle of the story. While the more sensationalized RAF Watton story has never been vindicated, there is proof that the base was involved to some degree. For example, in October 1988 I was directly informed by Squadron Leader E.E. Webster of RAF Watton: “Our log book for the period does indeed say that a UFO was reported to us by RAF Bentwaters at 0325 GMT on 28 December 1980 but that is all the information we have.” There is, however, more to come. On October 2, 1983, the News of the World newspaper reported that, “The first sighting of the craft over England was recorded on a radar screen” at RAF Watton. The NOTW added that, “Radar operators followed the progress as it flew over the East Coast until it disappeared.”

Moving ahead, in July 2015 the BBC took a look at the radar-driven side of all this. They told their readers: “New evidence has been gathered to back up claims a UFO landed near a U.S. airbase in Suffolk, a former deputy commander has claimed. Col. Charles Halt told the BBC he saw unidentified objects at Rendlesham Forest in December 1980. He says he now has statements from radar operators at RAF Bentwaters and nearby Wattisham airfield that an unknown object was tracked at the time.” The BBC got to the heart of the matter, as it relates to radar. They quoted Charles Halt as saying: “I have confirmation that (Bentwaters radar operators) … saw the object go across their 60 mile (96km) scope in two or three seconds, thousands of miles an hour. He came back across their scope again, stopped near the water tower, they watched it and observed it go into the forest where we were,” said Col Halt. At Wattisham, they picked up what they called a ‘bogie’ and lost it near Rendlesham Forest. Whatever was there was clearly under intelligent control.”

As fascinating as all of the above sounds, I’m still of the opinion that the “crashed UFO” story that circulated in the wake of the Rendlesham affair (and at Royal Air Force Watton) was deliberately created to hide something more down to earth: a top secret military experiment. In the next part of the story, I’ll demonstrate how easy it would have been for the team that ran the experiment to have made it look like UFOs were being monitored by radar, when in reality, the whole thing was a brilliant ruse.

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On the warm summer evening of August 4, 1943, 18-year-old, Ronnie Austin had been having a great time. He had gone to a drive-in theater to catch a flick with his girlfriend Phyllis Bruce, and shortly before midnight they began their drive home in Wayne City, Illinois. As they drove, they noticed something very strange up ahead in the sky at about treetop level, which looked like a bright, round light with “fuzzy edges,” and estimated as being about “the size of a washtub.” They at first thought that it might be an aircraft, but whatever it was had no flashing lights and was perfectly round, leading them to suspect this was something else. They marveled at it for a few minutes, but the encounter would get stranger still when they noticed that the object seemed to be following them. And so would begin a wild high speed chase along rural country roads by a mysterious UFO.

Ronnie Austin

The two noticed as they drove by that the mysterious light seemed to approach to keep pace with them, speeding up or slowing down when they did, and when they brought the car to a full stop the light also stopped to hover there with inscrutable intent. Austin decided to just try to ignore it and drive home as quickly as possible, but the object would allegedly follow them the whole way, always keeping the same distance from the vehicle and at one point crossing from one side of the car over to the other. They tried to convince themselves that this was just a coincidence and some sort of illusion, but this would be disproven when the object suddenly approached at great speed to hover a few hundred feet away, before pausing over an electronic relay tower and then taking up a position about 500 feet away from the car and its increasingly frightened occupants.

Austin kept driving, pulling onto the lonely gravel road that led to Phyllis’ home, and when they reached the house, her sister also came outside to witness the anomalous object. The three of them watched the light for a few minutes before the two spooked girls went inside after the thing got closer, and Austin decided to get out of there, setting out in his car for the trip home. The object then continued to follow him, along the way making several threatening displays and increasingly aggressive maneuvers, such as speeding over the car, cutting him off, and changing color from a bright white to a more ominous darker orange glow. At one point the object shot off to hover over a barn about a mile away, before speeding back, and by this time Austin was really gunning it down the dark road, later estimating that he had been going about 120 mph, but the object easily paced him and did circling maneuvers and passes around him, causing the radio to crackle with static and make a “whining sound” whenever it passed overhead, as well as causing his engine to sputter. The thing got so close that Austin could now see that it was about the size of a small car. It continued to make these threatening displays all the way to Austin’s house, where he stopped and ran inside like his life depended on it, which for all he knew, it did. In the meantime, the mysterious light took up a position over a nearby farmhouse around 300 yards away and hovered silently.

Austin rushed into the home and woke his parents, sister, and brother, and they all saw the object as well through the window, the whole thing spooky enough that his father even grabbed a shotgun for good measure. They noticed that when they turned the lights on, the thing would begin to move towards the home, but when the lights were turned off it returned to its position above the nearby barn, suggesting it was attracted somehow to the light. They called the police in a panic, and when officers showed up, they also saw the strange light, as did several neighbors who had come outside to see what all of the fuss was about. As they all looked on, the object would then begin ascending upwards into the sky until it was out of sight. The event soon made the press and attracted the attention of UFO investigators, with the researchers from the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) arriving the following day to interview the many witnesses, and they were interviewed by several news sources as well, and there was an Air Force team who arrived on the scene as well, consisting of Lt. Col. Robert J. Friend, then the Director of Project Blue Book; Capt. Hector Quintanilla, and Sgt. Charles R. Sharp. Readings were taken of the car, the results of which have never been released, and oddly Austin was instructed to wash it right away, while they “decontaminated” the interior, all while they tried to dismiss talk of UFOs and try to explain it all away. The presence of the Air Force was curious, and NICAP investigator Francis Ridge would say of it:

The AF must have considered this case important. They had flown in the special team of physicists from Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio. Normally, when investigating a case, they would send the local “UFO officer” from the nearest airbase. In this case it would have been Scott AFB at Belleville, Illinois (near St. Louis). Something strange was going on in the Midwest, and AF Intelligence was interested in something that “didn’t exist.” A quick check would have eliminated a refueling operation and the need for an onsite.

Newspaper clipping of the UFO car chase

Does the image on the left show a UFO

What in the world was going on here? With around a dozen witnesses including police officers it certainly seems that something weird was going on, but what? Why would this object want to so aggressively toy with this young man in his car? What did it want? Interestingly, this incident coincided with a spate of UFO sightings around Illinois at the time, so did this have perhaps some part to play? Whatever the answers may be, it is a curious little incident that can be added to the pile of the many bizarre UFO encounters out there.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

There’s no doubt that radar has played a large role in the study of the UFO phenomenon. For decades, strange and mysterious craft have been recorded on radar-screens by personnel at numerous military facilities. But, we get further, though, here’s a bit of background on radar: As the people at ExplainThatStuff! state: “An airplane’s radar is a bit like a torch that uses radio waves instead of light. The plane transmits an intermittent radar beam (so it sends a signal only part of the time) and, for the rest of the time, “listens” out for any reflections of that beam from nearby objects. If reflections are detected, the plane knows something is nearby—and it can use the time taken for the reflections to arrive to figure out how far away it is. In other words, radar is a bit like the echolocation system that “blind” bats use to see and fly in the dark.” With that said, now let’s take a look at some fascinating cases. In September 1952, NATO held a large-scale military exercise in the North Sea and English Channel. Its name: Operation Mainbrace.

During the week-long exercise numerous UFO sightings were made by military personnel. One of those was William Maguire, whose encounter occurred on September 17. At the time, he was stationed at RAF Sandwich, Kent, England. Maguire speaks of his memories of how staff at the base tracked on radar the movements of a gigantic UFO hovering over the sea: “My memory was that everything was in a complete flap. Normally, in a military situation everything is ordered, regular and set out. But here was a situation that was plainly out of control. Mechanics were flying about all over the place. The mechanics were being blamed for not calibrating the instruments properly; we were being blamed for not interpreting the readings correctly. Every single instrument on the base was showing this enormous object sitting up at an unbelievable height. It was the size of a warship and it just stood there.”

Moving on: According to the late UFO researcher James McDonald: “An Air Force RB-47, equipped with ECM (Electronic Countermeasures) gear, manned by six officers, was followed over a total distance in excess of 600 miles and for a time period of more than an hour, as it flew from near Gulfport, Miss., through Louisiana and Texas, and into southern Oklahoma. The unidentified object was, at various times, seen visually by the cockpit crew (as an intense white or red light), followed by ground-radar, and detected on ECM monitoring gear aboard the RB-47. Simultaneous appearances and disappearances on all three of those physically distinct ‘channels’ mark this UFO case as especially intriguing from a scientific viewpoint.”

An FBI document of September 21, 1951, and captioned “Flying Saucers,” reads as follows: “On September 20, Andrew J. Reid G-2 [Army Intelligence] Ft. Monmouth, NJ, provided following report of unconventional aircraft observed by radar at above Army installation. On Sept 10, fiftyone [sic], an AN/MPG-1 radar set picked up a fast moving low flying target, exact altitude undetermined at approximately 11:10 a.m., southeast of Ft. Monmouth at a range of about twelve thousand yards. The target appeared to approximately follow the coast line, changing its range only slightly but changing its azimuth rapidly. The radar set was set to full aided azimuth tracking which normally is fast enough to track jet aircraft, but in this case was too slow to be resorted to. Target was lost in the N.E. at a range of about fourteen thousand yards.” The story gets even more controversial, as the next part of the report makes very clear: “This target also presented an unusually strong return for aircraft[,] being comparable in strength to that usually received from a coastal ship [italics mine].”

An FBI teletype of October 13, 1950 refers to the radar detection of a definitive squadron of unknown objects tracked over the Oak Ridge installation at 11:25 p.m. on October 12. The documentation states: “USAF radar installation at Knoxville…picked up indications of eleven objects and perhaps more traveling across controlled area of Atomic Energy installation at Oak Ridge.” The report continued: “Altitude of objects varied from one thousand to five thousand feet…and density from reading made by light aircraft equal in size to C-47, speed from one hundred to one hundred twenty-five miles per hour…” Then we have the following from the same document: “No reasonable explanation for radar readings yet developed although operators are experienced reliable personnel and radar set is in perfect operating condition. Bureau will advise of further developments.” Four days later, the FBI received the details of yet another alarming incident, this time involving the visual sighting of a UFO over Oak Ridge.

The so-called “Kinross Case”” focuses upon the strange – and still-unresolved – disappearance of a US Air Force F-89C jet fighter that was scrambled late on the night of November 23, 1953, on an “active air defense mission” to intercept an “unknown aircraft” over Lake Superior. Kinross Air Force Base, which was closest to the scene where the “unknown”” was initially tracked, quickly alerted the 433^rd Fighter Interception Squadron at Truax Field, Madison, Wisconsin, and the F-89C gave immediate chase. Available USAF records demonstrate that the F-89 was vectored west-northwest, then west, climbing to 30,000 feet. While on its westerly course, the crew received permission to descend to 7,000 feet, turning east-northeast and coming steeply down on the target from above. Alarmingly, as the aircraft closed-in on the “unknown” it subsequently vanished into oblivion, along with its two crew-members. The last radar contact placed the interceptor at 8,000 feet, 70 miles from Keeweenaw Point, and about 150 miles northwest of Kinross AFB, which, today, is called Kincheloe AFB.

An extract from the official USAF Aircraft Accident Report outlines further details of the official story: “Aircraft took off at 2322 Zebra 23 Nov 53 on an active Air Defense Mission to intercept an unknown aircraft approximately 160 miles Northwest of Kinross Air Force Base. The aircraft was under radar control throughout the interception. At approximately 2352 Zebra the last radio contact was made by the radar station controlling the interception. At approximately 2355 Zebra the unknown aircraft and the F-89 merged together on the radar scope. Shortly thereafter the IFF signal disappeared from the radar scope. No further contact was established with the F-89. An extensive aerial search has revealed no trace of the aircraft. The aircraft and its crew are still missing.” For both ufologists and the Air Force the matter of the Kinross affair remains wide open.

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

On the eighth anniversary of its occurrence, a UFO captured on video over Puerto Rico by a U.S. Homeland Security plane is back in the news because it still hasn’t been resolved, and scientists who think a UAP that is seen traveling at 120 mph through both the air and the ocean before splitting in two should be investigated until it is identified and, if it’s not from Earth, the three-minute video is the “most compelling” evidence in existence of an alien spacecraft. In the wake of statements by Pentagon on other similar UFO videos recorded by military aircraft and the open policies on UFO data by other governments, this seems like a reasonable request.

“The SCU believes that all government data regarding unidentified aerospace objects should be made available to the public to be openly investigated by the broader scientific community, provided that such data does not compromise sources or methods of data collection. A full scientific investigation of such data would be able to uncover valuable information relating to both national security and advancement of our understanding of physics, aerospace engineering, and our world.”

In a letter, signed off by 55 concerned scientists, to Senators Marco Rubio and Mark Warner (read it here), the Scientific Coalition for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (SCU) urged that the upcoming promised unclassified report on UFOs by the Director of the National Intelligence and the Department for Defense due for release in June contain more evidence on recent military encounters — evidence the SCU has been requesting without success. They hope it will include information on the 2013 UFO recorded on April 25, 2013. According to SCU spokesperson Jonathon Lace, the object was first seen over a runway at Rafael Hernandez airport in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. Shortly after that, Homeland Security (Customs and Border Protection (CBP)) pilots of a DHC-8 Turboprop spotted a red light over the ocean, were told by air traffic controllers they could not identify it, and too the three-minute video with an infrared camera. That video was later leaked to SCU, which conducted its own investigation.

If only the video were this clear

“They (the pilots) wanted (the video) to be scientifically looked at, not UFO related, because again, the stigma that goes along with UFOs. So we pull the team together.”

“The object witnessed by CBP and tower personnel and recorded on the CBP DHC-8 aircraft’s thermal imaging system is of unknown origin. There is no explanation for an object capable of traveling under water at over 90 mph with minimal impact as it enters the water, through the air at 120 mph at low altitude through a residential area without navigational lights, and finally to be capable of splitting into two separate objects. No bird, no balloon, no aircraft and no known drones have that capability.”

Rich Hoffman, one of the co-founders of SCU and an experienced UFO investigator, told Mystery Wire the SCU investigation was thorough and refuted all of the alternatives proposed by skeptics. (The full SCU report can be seen on their website.) What looks like the ability to travel in both air and water – known as “trans-medium travel” is especially intriguing and sets this UFO video apart from the recently disclosed photos of UFOs seen by Navy ships off the coast of California in 2019 and the Tic Tacs seen by Nimitz pilots and personnel in 2004.

Still image from the footage of the “tic-tac” UFO

“This video is the best documentation of an unknown aerial and submerged nautical object exhibiting advanced technology that the authors of this report have ever seen.”

Why doesn’t the military or the government feel the same? According to Hoffman, the video kept getting passed between departments with none of them wanting to take ownership. Will the SCU Letter to Senators Rubio and Warner help? Both have expressed interest in UOFs/UAPs, but it remains to be seen if they’re able to stand up to whoever internally is applying the longstanding and extremely powerful pressure to conceal this data.

If only Mulder and Scully were available.

While UFO enthusiasts in the U.S. are applauding the few tidbits coming out from government authorities on sightings by military or commercial pilots, Canadian commercial pilots have been logging them for years in a public database that is searchable in a variety of ways and accessible to anyone with a computer, time and interest. That description fits Vice.com, which recently dug into the data and found many close encounters of the commercial aircraft kind that makes one wonder if Canada is just more open about UFO sightings or if the Great White North is hotspot for aliens looking for beer, polar bears and hockey games. Let’s take a look at a few of the most interesting recent ones.

CADORS (Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System) is the Canadian national ATS (Airline Technical Support) safety data reporting system which collects information about operational occurrences within the Canadian National Civil Air Transportation System. Reporting by pilots is mandatory, but details of the occurrences are often brief and leave out details that come up in subsequent investigations.

Nonetheless, it’s an excellent starting point for incidents like the one on January 6, 2019, when the crew of the medical transporter Vanguard Air Care reported “an inexplicable bright light followed them… at the same altitude and speed” over northern Manitoba and “no aircraft were reported in their vicinity.” Civilian air traffic controllers alerted the 21 Aerospace Control and Warning Squadron Air Force unit at the CFB North Bay military base in northeastern Ontario. Their investigation was reported to the Government of Canada, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), and NORAD (part of their responsibility area). That report shows the incident occurred in the Mystery Lake region (coincidence?) near Thompson, Manitoba, and the analysis was “another A/C” (aircraft). The end result is disappointing UFO-wise, but this shows that the Canadian government has a UFO investigation department that works with their military and that of the U.S. … a department that seems to be thorough and somewhat open to the public.

Another interesting encounter occurred on April 30, 2018, when a Kalitta Charters Boeing 747 cargo flight flying over the Northwest Territories reported “an object flying sporadically, estimated at (60 to 80 thousand feet) and moving at Mach 4” – a speed that exceeds the capability of the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Vice.com notes that the CADORS report wasn’t filed for a year-and-a-half and, while it doubted the crew’s judgement of the speed, could not identify the speedy object.

SR-71

One that made the Canadian news happened on November 14, 2016, over Lake Ontario when a Porter Airlines Dash 8-400 turboprop dove to avoid hitting an unidentified object that “appeared to be solid… and shaped like an upright doughnut or inner tube.” Two flight attendants were injured so the incident was reported by the Toronto Star and other media outlets, forcing the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) to investigate. According to CADORS, it found the object was “approximately 5 to 8 feet in diameter” and implied that the pilot could have just flown past it but chose instead to override the autopilot and take a nosedive evasive action. Vice.com notes that TSB never did identify the object.

More incidents such as these can be found by searching the CADORS database. The amount of unusual events makes clear that there’s unexplained stuff going on in Canadian airspace where thousands of passengers fly (at least until the pandemic) every day – and that means the same thing is occurring in the U.S. UFO investigator Chris Rutkowski told Vice.com that everyone, not just UFO enthusiasts, should be concerned about this. Former Royal Canadian Air Force pilot John “Jock” Williams plainly states the frustration everyone outside of the military or the government has when looking into these events:

“Any aviator who goes through the trouble of reporting something like this deserves to have it investigated. I don’t see that happening in Canada.”

Nor the U.S. … yet. Kudos to Vice.com for bringing this and many other ‘mysterious lights’ to light.

Located on the New England Highway in northern New South Wales, Australia, about 250 miles north of Sydney, is the rural township of Guyra. It is perched high on a volcanic uplift of the Northern Tablelands, and in fact the town is one of the highest in Australia at 4,364 feet above sea level, and is known for being one of the coldest places to live in Australia, comparatively speaking. It is a quaint place full of natural beauty, but not a place where a whole lot typically happens, yet this would change in December of 1999, when a mysterious object fell from the sky to smash right into the local water dam. So would begin a mystery that would cause hysteria in this small town, and which has not ever been concretely explained.

On December 8, a local council employee was carrying out routine maintenance work at the Guyra Water Supply Dam when he noticed an unusual sight. There was a crater at least 6 feet across and area of reeds measuring 50 feet by 20 feet that had been flattened in a semi-circular pattern, as if something had plunged down from the sky to smash into the ground there right at the edge of the dam. When police were notified, it would turn out that locals had been calling in actual sightings of an object coming down, described as a “green light” that had caused a loud boom about 30 seconds after being sighted. However, rather oddly, space agencies and meteorological experts and authorities in Canberra had no record of a meteorite or space junk coming down in the area at that time. No one had a clue what it could have possibly been, but just to be safe, authorities quickly moved to shut down the water supply and carry out an investigation. It was quickly found that radiation levels in the vicinity were normal, but in the absence of any more information the water supply was cut while divers got to work to check out the bottom.

Guyra, New South Wales

As this was going on, the incident was hitting the news in a major way, featured prominently on all of the major television networks, radio stations and newspapers. Newspapers were covered with sensationalist headlines such as “There’s an alien in Guyra’s drink!”, “Guyra hit by mystery flying object,” “UFO splashdown – Divers search dam for mystery object,” “Does Guyra Have a UFO in its Dam?” and others like these. Such headlines stirred up much intense interest, with people flooding into the normally quiet town in droves and rumors going around that a UFO had crashed at the dam. It was a minor hysteria and the theories were flying, with some saying that it was a meteorite or space junk, while others said it was aliens, and this captured the attention of the Australian UFO Research Network, who contacted the RAAF base at Amberley Ipswich. One of the team’s researchers, Martin Studer, would say of this:

I spoke to office staff at Amberley RAAF and they told me they had heard it wasn’t a meteorite, that it was an object of some kind. It was funny they were having a laugh with me saying maybe it was a space ship, ha! I was told that people have been sent to measure radiation. I was asked to hold the line and they would transfer me to someone who could help me with my inquiry. I got transferred to the, RAAF base at William Town NSW. The police divers are in the lake looking for what may have landed. William’s Town RAAF are waiting for the Police to report back before moving. It was still not clear what had come down, it could have been space junk or meteorite or a plane.

In the meantime, police divers were searching the water, and they found a subterranean cavern or tunnel, which was suspected to have been caused by the object drilling deep into the ground, but at first the object itself could not be located. Over several days of searches, the water was found to not be contaminated, and there were some mysterious fragments found on the bottom, but whatever the mystery object was, it could not be retrieved because it was speculated to have buried itself about 13 feet down into the soft granite down in the earth. The official cause of the impact was now being seen as a meteorite, which was thought to have been about the size of a grapefruit, but there were no further efforts to retrieve it. The General Manager of the Guyra Shire Council, Geoff Brooks, dismissed any talk of trying to actually dig up the object, saying:

Bearing in mind its location in the dam, I think it’s unlikely that Council will commit any more resources to it. Certainly it’s difficult to get to and it causes a fair bit of disruption to the water supply. So I think it will actually remain one of life’s marvelous mysteries.

As far as officials were concerned, that was that. It was a meteorite, pure and simple, move along. However, this was not known for sure, and no object had been produced to prove that it had been a meteorite, so conspiracies were going around that officials were trying to cover up what had really gone down, with accusations that the object actually had been dug up and whisked off, and that it was no meteorite but rather a UFO. This was further fueled by the fact that the RAAF base contacted by the Australian UFO Research Network had quite clearly stated that it had not been a meteorite. Things got even more mysterious when two researchers from Phenomena Research Australia (PRA) by the names of John Auchettl and Ron Barnett went to investigate, who also speculated that it might have been a meteorite, but also found some odd details that did not fit into this theory. Auchettl would say:

We did find the site interesting. Normally, we would not travel to such sites, but the information sent to us from DoD warranted a look. So yes, the impact has some strange aspects to it that need to be looked at. For example, the angle of entry to the dam was very shallow less than 45 degrees. The surface has burn marks; this is very unusual for a meteorite impact. I had a good look at the reeds on the bank. They are down in a strange shape not quite like an explosion but have the characteristics of a compression wave. The mud splash is also interesting as it lets us know how much energy was in the impact but the sting in the tail, with this impact, is on the other side [bank], the object may have skipped on the water. There was no witness to the impact.

Indeed, one of the problems is that no one seems to have seen the actual impact, making it hard to tell just what came down to earth here. Also making things more difficult are the discrepancies in some of the reports from eyewitnesses. For instance, some witnesses mentioned a green glow or light before the object apparently came down, while others said it was blue, and some witnesses described a loud boom like an explosion, while others made no mention of a sound. It all makes for a compelling mystery, and while the official explanation is that this was nothing more than a crashed meteorite, there are plenty of people who think it could have been something far more mysterious. What came down at the Guyra Dam that day and what happened to it? We may never know for sure.

Among the many, many UFO reports out there, some of them have truly stood the test of time and proven to be even more unexplainable than most. These are the cases that have come from very credible witnesses, with corroborating evidence to show that they are not making all of this up, and it is cases like these that truly inspire wonder and awe. One such UFO encounter happened in the skies of Australia, and has served to incite debate and discussion to this day.

On August 31, 1954, a Lieutenant J.A. “Shamus” O’Farrell was returning to Royal Australian Navy Air Station Nowra, in New South Wales, aboard his Sea Fury aircraft. It had been a routine standard night-navigation exercise at dusk, and at 7:10 PM O’Farrell contacted the air base with a routine radio communication. Up until that point everything had been going smoothly and without issue, but things were about to get very strange. Shortly after this radio contact with the base, O’Farrell allegedly saw a very bright light closing in on him fast from his 1 o’clock position. This anomalous light then crossed in front of his aircraft to take up a position on his port side, where it appeared to match his speed. He then noticed a second bright light approaching from his 9 o’clock position, which passed the plane about a mile in front of it and then returned to the position of the original light. He would later describe each object as a “vague cigar shape with the bright light situated centrally on top.” He would say of what happened:

I was just over 12,000ft. It was a fine dark night. The stars were all out with no moon, no clouds, no bad weather and good visibility. A pleasant night for night flying. I had been airborne for about two hours and was somewhere in the Goulburn region, near Canberra. When I left Nowra, the radar there was not working, but they were hoping to get it on line by the time I returned. The operators asked me to call so that they could do a check-tune on me as I came in. I was surprised when I saw two aircraft, on either side of me, each with a single bright light above it, but with no navigation lights. In fact, it was quite a shock because everything was going well. I was keeping a lookout, constantly scanning from one side of the aircraft to the other. They came from astern and I looked out to one side and thought, ‘Gee, what is that?’ I continued to look around and there, on the other side, was another one. They were in formation with me, and holding their station with me and they were about the same distance out on either side. And then I thought about it for some time to make sure I wasn’t seeing things that weren’t there. But sure enough, I could see two dark cigar-shaped objects – not very long, about the size of a Dakota – but their central bright lights made their outline quite distinct. I could see no other details, no other lights – just one bright centrally placed light over the top of each mass.

Sea Fury aircraft

The two mysterious objects would be reported as approaching and later leaving extremely fast, much faster than his own aircraft, later estimated as having been moving at 1,000 mph or more, and the shocked O’Farrell contacted Nowra to see if their radar was online yet and whether they were seeing this. After telling the base what had happened they confirmed that they had two objects on their radar that matched the position he described, after which the two lights fell into the 9 o’clock position and sped off to the northeast. The radar team would lose track of the objects after that, and at the time there was no rational explanation for what they could be. In an interview with ufologist Bill Chalker, O’Farrell would later say of the incident and his conversation with the base:

I said, “Nowra, this is 921. Do you have me on radar?” “And a few seconds later they came back and said, “Affirmative 921. We have you coming in from the west. We have another two contacts as well. Which one are you.” “I said, “I think I’m the central one.” And so they said, “Do a 180…for identification.” So I did a quick 180 and then continued on around and made it a 360 back to where I was going. “They said, “Yes, we’ve got you. You’re the centre aircraft.” I said that’s correct. They then said to me, “Who are the other two aircraft,” and I said, “I don’t know. I was hoping you would tell me, because I didn’t think there was anyone up here. They said, “Well there shouldn’t be, and they certainly shouldn’t be that close to you.”

So the conversation went on like this and I was very pleased to be talking to somebody because it gave me a lot of reassurance. With that these two aircraft came in quite close to me and I could really see the dark mass and that they were quite big, but I couldn’t make out any other lights or any other form of an aircraft. With that they took off and headed off to the north east at great speed. I was about to press the button and tell them at Nowra that the two aircraft were departing when Nowra called me up and said, “The other two aircraft appear to be departing at high speed to the north east. Is that correct?” and I said, “Yes!”. And they said, “Roger, we’ll see if we can track them.” They tracked them for a while and then lost them. I came in and landed at 7.30 (1930) and when I got there there were quite a few people waiting for me. I thought it was a bit strange and so they came over, and they said, “You sure you had aircraft out there!” and I said yes.

Upon landing, he was met by the Surgeon Commander, who would give him a full medical check-up to find nothing physically wrong with him. Although the Directorate of Naval Intelligence deemed O’Farrell to be a seasoned, well-respected pilot and “an entirely credible witness,” and despite this and the corroboration from the base radar, he would claim that the main attitude around the base was that no one completely believed it. After this, the case was quietly kept secret until it began to leak into the news in December of that year. Before long there were headlines all over the papers talking about the “Sea Fury Incident,” forcing the Royal Navy to make a statement. Incredibly, the Navy Minister would be quite forthcoming about what had happened, while stopping short of saying that these had been aliens from outer space. He would say:

It is a fact that on a night cross-country flight from Nowra on August 31, at 13,000 feet above Goulburn, a pilot in a Sea Fury observed two lights on his radar, with vague shapes underneath. The lights passed ahead of him at a very fast speed as he flew at 220 knots (just under 250mph). The pilot made contact with Nowra and advised them. It was later ascertained that the only other aircraft in the vicinity was a TAA Convair. This was passed by Naval Intelligence to RAAF Intelligence.

The news brought a great amount of unwanted attention to O’Farrell, who was afraid that this was going to ruin his career. He was approached by numerous news agencies who constantly harassed him, even as the military tried to distance itself from the whole affair and sweep it under the carpet. As this was going on he also faced a good amount of ridicule from those who didn’t believe him, including close colleagues. The other pilots thought he had lost his mind, and it all took its toll of O’Farrell, who continued to insist that he was telling the truth but just wanted to leave it behind him. He would say:

I was bit ashamed about it all. People thought that I had flipped my lid, lost control, done something silly. And it was a bit of a joke by the rest of the aircrew. People would have a few drinks and say to you, ‘Have a drink O’Farrell and tell us more about the flying saucers.’ As the years went by I became more embarrassed and I just wiped it out of my memory and never worried about it again. It has always intrigued me. It has always worried me. To this day I am as certain as I was then that I saw two objects flying in close formation with me. And I am convinced that they weren’t aeroplanes that come from the Navy, Army or the Air Force, or Civil aviation. Whatever they were, they were very fast craft and they very, very good performance. I saw no explanation, but I didn’t see any need to tell anybody else about it or talk about it.

However, he would never really be able to escape it. Over the years, O’Farrell’s case would be pursued by several UFO researchers, including Australian ufologist Bill Chalker and American UFO researcher Dr. Allen Hynek, who interviewed him and could find no rational explanation for what he had experienced. In particular, O’Farrell would remember how when he had met Hynek in 1973, the researcher had been very interested in the case, in that it was in his opinion one of the stronger cases he had come across. O’Farrell would say of this:

The interesting thing he (Hynek) said was that all of these sightings had been made by professional people in aviation. By that he meant they were military pilots, military aircrew, civil aviation operators, air traffic controllers, and the like, or airline pilots. These were the ones he was now (1973) going around meeting the people themselves and investigating. All the others he had written off and had been able to explain down to some other phenomena. It came to the point where he said, “Your sighting cannot be explained away.” And he left it at that. To this day I wouldn’t know where it came from or where it went.

Interestingly, the official files on the case would be classified for decades, and it was only after they were declassified that it would be learned that O’Farrell had not been as nuts as many had made him out to be. It would turn out that there had actually been two further independent witnesses to the event. One was an officer from the Department of Aviation who had been out repairing a navigation beacon when he had visually seen the two lights streak past shortly after the incident, and the objects had also been detected by an air traffic controller in the tower at Sydney’s Mascot Airport, who had logged in two strange fast-moving lights passing to the south of the city. Why had these reports been kept under wraps while O’Farrell was being lambasted by everyone as being a liar or a kook? Also rather odd is that the original tape of O’Farrell’s communication with the base during the incident has disappeared, as have several official files on the matter. Without those files, it is hard to say what is really going on here, but Chalker is convinced that this is a very credible account that deserves serious consideration, saying on the TV program The Extraordinary:

One has to bear in mind the credentials that come with the sighting. You have a highly qualified and experienced pilot, you have confirmation from the ground from the radar operator. You have two separate ground witnesses all confirming the presence of two unidentified aircraft of some description. And doing things that were apparently inexplicable beyond the capabilities apparent at that time.

The Sea Fury case has gone on to be considered one of the most credible unexplained UFO encounters out there, and there are many questions still lingering about it. What did O’Farrell see out there? Was this some kind of experimental aircraft or something else? Why were the other witness accounts covered up and why were the files doomed to be classified or to go missing entirely? It is hard to say that he could have possibly just been seeing things because there are other corroborating reports, such as the radar evidence and the other sightings, so what was going on here? Whatever the case may be, the Sea Fury UFO incident has managed to become a classic case that has continued to elude understanding.

Out in the cold, gray expanse of the Arctic Ocean, north of mainland Europe, is the remote Norwegian archipelago of Spitzbergen, now mostly known as Svalbard. It is a frigid, somewhat hostile domain once used as a base of operations for whalers and miners, with most of the land covered by glaciers and intersected by numerous fjords, and enveloped in a near eternal night during the frigid winter months. It is a sparsely inhabited, largely untouched and unspoiled realm of majestic natural beauty, and it is also the location of a series of very bizarre supposed UFO crashes.

The first of two supposed UFO crashes in the area of Spitzbergen supposedly begins in 1946, when a General James H. Doolittle was allegedly sent to the region by the Shell Oil Company for the purpose of investigating aerial phenomena in the area that were being called “ghost rockets.” Journalist Dorothy Kilgallen would then claim that a crashed UFO had been recovered in the area by the British and U.S. governments, claiming that sailors serving aboard the U.S.S. Alabama had told her that the mysterious craft had been recovered by Doolittle in Spitzbergen and whisked away to the U.S. for study. The story would basically end here, with her taking the truth to her grave when she died in 1965, but it would not be the last time something like this would be reported from the region.

Settlement in Spitzbergen

In June of 1952, a squadron of six Norwegian jet planes had just started summer maneuvers over Spitsbergen. As they sped over the Hinlopen Straits their radios began crackling and emitting static before anomalously cutting out entirely to leave them with no way to communicate with each other. In the meantime, radar showed that an unidentified object was fast approaching, but the pilots themselves could see nothing visually. The fighters circled the area for some time, when Air Captain Olaf Larsen purportedly looked down to see a metallic disc lodged into the snow frosted landscape down below, measuring 40 to 50 meters in diameter and shiny and bright enough to stand out in the snowy landscape. Further inspection would reveal that machinery and cables could be seen, as well as a series of jets around the side and what appeared to be a broken cockpit protruding from the icy ground. When they were finally able to get back to base and report what they had found, an expedition was sent to the apparent crash site, and a report in the German newspaper, Saarbrücker Zeitung would say of what was found:

A precise inspection of the remote-controlled flying disc that landed on the Nordaustlandet of Spitsbergen due to interference problems, led to the following indisputable information. The flying object, which has a diameter of 48.88 meters and slanting sides, is round and was unmanned. The circular steel object, is made out of an unknown metal compound, resembles a silver disc. After ignition, 46 automatic jets, located at equal distances on the outer ring, rotate the disc around a plexiglassed center ball, that contains measuring and control devices for remote control. The measuring instruments (gauges) have Russian symbols. The action radius of the disc seems to be more than 30.000 km, and the altitude over 160 km. The flying object, which resembles one of the legendary “flying saucers”, has sufficient room for high explosive bombs, possibly nuclear bombs.

In the wreck of the apparatus an expert is said to have discovered a radio piloting transmitter with a nucleus of plutonium transmitting on all wavelengths with 934 hertz, a measure that has been unknown so far. The investigation has also shown that the flying saucer crashed because of a defect in its radio piloting system. The saucer which carried no crew. The steel used in the construction is an unknown ally. It consists of an exterior disc provided at its peripheral with 46 automatic jets. This disc pivots around the central sphere which contains the measurement and remote-control equipment. The Norwegian specialists assumed that the disc had started from the Soviet Union and had gone down over Spitsbergen due to a mistake in transmitting or receiving, being incapacitated because of the hard landing. The strange, remote-controlled, unmanned jet plane will be brought to Narvik on board a ship for further investigation.

OK, so although weird, this was obviously just some sort of Russian experimental aircraft of some sort, right? Well, that is what it would seem to be at first, yet the story would continue to pick up new information and evolve. As the story got out into the open it would pick up new details, such as that of a report that supposedly came forth from a Colonel Gernod Darnhyl, of the Norwegian General Staff, who supposedly made the statement:

The Spitsbergen crash was very rewarding. True enough, our science still faces many riddles. I am sure, however, that they can soon be solved by these remains from Spitsbergen. A misunderstanding developed, some time ago, when it was stated that the flying disc was probably of Soviet origin. It has – this we must state emphatically – not been built by any country on earth. The materials are completely unknown to all experts, either not to be found on Earth, or processed by physical or chemical processes unknown to us. We must tell the public what we know about the unknown flying objects. A misplaced secrecy may well one day lead to panic! We now have material at hand, on which we can start. That means laboratories can start the work right away and they might give us preliminary results shortly. Norwegian scientists think that the material from Spitsbergen can only give away its secrets by nuclear crushing; this because it does not change either at absolute zero, when air is liquified, or at the highest temperatures technically possible with our technology. Also, every chemical treatment has been tried. Scientific results will only be released subsequent to a UFO conference in London or Washington.

So now it is not a Russian aircraft? Curiouser and curiouser. Before long, there were ever more fantastical stories surrounding the purported UFO crash, such as a report in Uruguayan newspaper El Nacional, of Montevideo. In the report, it is claimed that the Norwegian scientist Hans Larsen Løberg had made clear that the craft had actually come down at the German island of Helgoland, in the North Sea, and was definitely not Russian, having no discernible engine, nor any rivets, fuses or bolts, and speculated to have operated on “magnetic forces.” Løberg also apparently stated that the craft had some sort of “beam weapon” on board, as well as the remains of actual alien bodies. The report reads in part:

The material used was as light as aluminum, but very much harder, and probably much heat-resistant. Of the things found in its interior, they noticed some water that was three times as heavy as normal water, and a few pills which were taken to be food. There was also an apparatus which probably was a radio. It was quite small and had no antenna. They also found some books, probably navigational instructions, in a completely unknown writing. The doors of the spaceship were open. Just inside of the doors were 7 bodies, burned beyond recognition. Scientists are of the opinion, according to Larsen Løberg, that the bodies were of men at the age of between 25 and 30 years, about 1,65 m tall. All had perfect sets of teeth. The reason for the crash of this saucer, he thought, had to be that it was affected by the American hydrogen-bomb explosions. The material of the spaceship, and its apparatus, resisted the enormous heat, but the crew burned to death.

And just like that, the story has gone from a mysterious crash that could be anything or nothing at all to a downed alien spaceship with dead aliens on board. After this the whole story becomes hazy and there is not much to corroborate any of it, with many different versions offered up over the yeas that only further serve to muddy the waters as to what is going on. Indeed, there seems to be little to link any of this to an actual factual basis, and it lurks within the realm of strange cases that will probably be discussed over and over again, but which have no concrete evidence that can ever lead us in the direction of a real answer. The verdict of many in the UFO field is that this is an obvious hoax that has gotten out of control to take on a life of its own, with Norwegian ufologist Ole Jonny Brænne coming to the conclusion:

The conclusion therefore has to be that the Spitsbergen story (and the Helgoland story too, for that matter) is nothing but a classic H-O-A-X! The original authors, mainly J.M.M. and Sven Thygesen (if that was their real names), had a cursory knowledge of Norwegian military aircraft, but far from good enough. Even if this case does not hold any water, I will venture my way with a little prophecy: This story will, with great certainty, continue to be the subject of books as well as magazines during the 1990s. There will always be “researchers” who think this story deserves their enthusiastic attention, and cannot settle down with factual arguments which clearly show the story to lack any basis in reality.

Was this a hoax, or was there something more to it? Opinions seem to be divided on this case, which only further fuels speculation and debate. Did something crash out there in that snowy wilderness and was it covered up? Why has it evolved to add new details over time? It this the truth slowly coming out or the result of mere embellishment? Just what happened out there in the wilds of that remote place? The mystery remains, and we may never know for sure.